Primary language or language spoken at home are comment demographic questions, however ASL is rarely included. My gut assumption is this is ignorance and ableism, however are there any reasons to keep it separate when reporting out on aggregated data such as “English-speakers” and “Non English-speakers”?
1 Like
I am interested as well. Census bureau has a small section in their FAQs, here
Although, it’s a pretty lame excuse to say: “the data is not collected because we didn’t set it up that way”
I do know that ASL and English are different. Someone may be fluent in ASL but not in English.
Seems like at the root of it is that the term itself “speakers” leaves out many in the deaf community.
Here in WA State (K12), ASL is included as a valid language code for the questions about student primary language, language used at home and family’s preferred language. We use “language used” wherever we can instead of “spoken” so it’s inclusive. The only reason I know of to separate it out is if the work is specific to the body of law that protects each group from discrimination, ADA vs. Civil Rights. Our language access program is inclusive of both so we collect the data together.
1 Like
Oregon’s REALD standards, used by Oregon Health Authority and Oregon Department of Human Services, include ASL and other sign languges in the “language at home” question along with spoken languages. I would agree that it should be included given the advocacy I’ve seen from members of the Deaf community about being a linguistic minority. Thanks for raising this for the We All Count community!
Yes, ASL and English are very different languages and it feels so important to acknowledge that not everyone who signs is bilingual.
I think you are on to something with assumptions people have around words like “speakers”, “verbal communication”, etc.
I have seen that Census FAQ and I guess yeah, acknowledging you aren’t doing it and you know you aren’t doing it is step one. But you can change your data collection systems to resolve it!
1 Like
The Oregon REALD standards, while not perfect, seem to be some of the best out there at the moment! Also they are collecting information about disability as a demographic status too, that’s so rare but such an important data point to be able to disaggregate data by! So many unseen gaps and needs simply because the data doesn’t exist.