Cited or it Didn’t Happen.

Three dimensions of space — one of time. Drag to rotate. Hover a country to see its sign language and recognition status. Scrub the year slider to watch legal recognition spread across the world from 1864 to 2025.

WHO splits the world into six regions. Western Pacific carries 27%; four out of five untreated cases sit in LMICs.

38% of the global figure is age 65+. A generational accessibility curve, not just a Deaf-community one.

WHO calls 60% of childhood loss preventable — concentrates in the bottom three rows.

Search 25 ranked sign languages. Click a row to add to the comparison tray (max 4). Click a column to sort.

From 1864 to 2024 — drag, click, hit play, or use arrow keys.

Gold = Deaf / HoH adults. Slate = hearing adults. Toggle below.

Intersectional barriers compound — DeafBlind adults sit at less than half the hearing rate.

Median annual earnings (full-time, 25 +). Hearing adults earn $12,400 more — and the gap widens at every intersection.

Percentage of newborns screened for hearing loss before discharge — by World Bank income tier. Early identification (by 1 month) is the single highest-leverage intervention in the field; the gap between high- and low-income birthing facilities is one of the steepest in global health.

State-level legal recognition of ASL as a language. The federal government still has not formally recognized ASL.

• 2017HawaiiFirst US state to legally recognize ASL
• 2018New YorkRecognized as a foreign language for school credit
• 2019VirginiaASL world-language credit, K-12
• 2020New MexicoASL recognized as a language of instruction
• 2022MassachusettsBSL Act-style recognition statute passes
• 202447 of 50 statesSome form of statutory ASL recognition (NAD tracker)

Founded 1924 in Paris as the International Silent Games — the world's first international Deaf sporting event, predating the Paralympics by 36 years. From 9 nations to 109; from 148 athletes to ~3,000 at Tokyo 2025.

% who turn captions on at least sometimes.

Theatrical + streaming releases with at least one Deaf series-regular role. Click any bar to see selected titles for that year.

Compensable Video Relay Service minutes by provider (US, FCC TRS Fund 2023). Total ≈ 200M minutes/yr; Sorenson alone runs nearly half. Convo is the only Deaf-owned major provider.

Annual US compensable minutes since VRS became reimbursable in 2003. From 33M minutes (Year 1) to 215M projected (2025) — with milestone annotations: pre-reform peak, FCC fraud crackdown, ZVRS+Purple merger, COVID surge, the 2023 rate hike.

Refreshed continuously. Stories tile = last-12-month crawl across every Deaf-relevant news source we track.

Every figure on this dashboard traces back to one of these.

• WHO — Deafness & hearing loss factsheet
• WHO — World Report on Hearing (2021)
• Ethnologue — Sign languages
• World Federation of the Deaf — Human Rights
• Linguistic Society of America — Sign Language
• National Deaf Center — Deaf Postsecondary Data Interactive
• Gallaudet University — Deaf community history
• USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative
• Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences
• Preply / YouGov — Subtitle use survey
• FCC — Telecommunications Relay Services
• FCC — TRS Fund 2024-25 Report (Rolka Loube)
• Rolka Loube — TRS Fund Administrator
• The American Prospect — Private Equity Is Taking Your Calls (Sept 2024)
• NIDCD — Cochlear implants
• Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf
• Ethnologue — Indo-Pakistani Sign Language
• DeafMonitor aggregator (live)
• Joint Committee on Infant Hearing — 2019 Position Statement
• National Association of the Deaf — State ASL Recognition
• International Committee of Sports for the Deaf (Deaflympics)
• American Community Survey · IPUMS USA