Why ASL in Sports?
It is more than ‘just sports”. Sports provided Brice’s Deaf father a sanctuary where he could feel ‘included’. Little did he know that we could do so much more in the world of sports to feel included. Sports is visual which is one of the many reasons the Deaf and hard of hearing community are avid sports fans, but it has historically been inaccessible outside of the actual sport. Here at P-X-P, we believe that language and communication are a fundamental right to humans and all humans should have communication access, which is another reason why we believe in the importance of ASL in sports. However, oftentimes, the Deaf and hard of hearing community are left with an unequal experience when it comes to the rest of society since they do not have consistent access on television, at the game, and on social media/online.
If you look back in history, Deaf people have influenced the game of sports. For example, William ‘Dummy’ Hoy, who is known to be the most successful Deaf professional baseball player, was instrumental in influencing the game of baseball as we see today. Baseball signs from managers, the strike/ball signs from umpires were invented by Hoy, so he could have access to the game. Another example is the huddle that we see in football, which was created by the Gallaudet University football team, and is now ubiquitous in sports. These are just a couple of examples of how Deaf individuals have influenced sports, and we believe that it’s time we reciprocate the favor to the Deaf community by mainstreaming ASL accessibility within sports.
Lastly, while closed captioning is paramount to access, it is not the only solution to inaccessibility. Case in point, there are roughly 1 – 1.5 million Deaf people in the United States that use ASL as their preferred language. Captions while providing access for many are in English. ASL has a different grammatical structure than English, which means if you only provide captions, you again are placing the burden on Deaf individuals to decipher the captions while you could easily be providing access in their native language along with captions to create a holistic and accessible experience. Also, while captions are important, they do not provide inflection, pace, tone, emotion, humor, etc. But guess what? ASL does. This may seem overwhelming, but for us, this is our wheelhouse. This is why we created P-X-P. To usher in a new era of accessible and inclusive experiences in sports & entertainment. We are here to take your sports organization and venue to the next level. More accessibility = more engagement = more fans