Hello everyone,
It's been so long since I have posted, but life happens. Then today, I find out there is a petition to the White House requesting that President Barack Obama and the rest of the federal government recognize American Sign Language as a language and as the language of instruction for deaf babies and children. This petition was put together by the Alliance for Deaf Bilingual Children. It was brought to my attention in an e-newsletter from the Deaf Bilingual Coalition. In order to be recognized for consideration by the White House, there needs to be 25,000 signatures. They only need another 8000+ to reach that goal, and I am calling on all of you readers (regardless how few there really are on this little blog) to do your part and show your support for the Deaf community by telling the government that deaf children should be ignored and misled no longer. I will post a link at the end of this rant. It will require you to sign up for a whitehouse.gov account, but it seems to just be a way for them to account for signature verification. i just did it myself and it took only a minute.
I cannot stress the importance for this enough. We live in a country where signing for hearing babies has become a popular option for many parents, yet all this time and historically it has not been considered appropriate for deaf children (go Audism). Many schools for the deaf refuse to recognize ASL as their language of instruction. Nearly every audiologist in the country makes no referral of deaf children and their parents to meet someone who is culturally deaf so that they can learn about more than just assistive hearing technologies like hearing aids and cochlear implants. Audism such as this has created a gross imbalance in what parents of deaf children receive for information on all the options available to them. ASL and the Deaf community almost never get equal representation. This petition could be a huge first step in laying a foundation for equality to be built upon.
As I mentioned earlier, I could not say enough in support of this petition. I hope what I have said is enough to help you seriously consider clicking the following link and sign the petition. Here is the link
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/officially-recognize-american-sign-language-community-language-and-language-instruction-schools/CRPw2JLk?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl
Please show your support!
Until next time,
R. M.
