Chapter 2. The sign language community
The World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) reports that there are over 70 million deaf people in the world, coming from over 135 member states of the United Nations. One of their members is Germany with a number of deaf people ranging between 80,000 to 300,000 in total. Indeed, the number of deaf people living in Germany differs with respect to the reports of different organizations: The German Federal Association of the Deaf (in German: Deutscher Gehörlosenbund - DGB) mentions on its website 80,000 deaf persons. The German Federal Association of Hard of Hearing people (in German: Deutscher Schwerhörigenbund – DSB) claims that 16 million people are hearing impaired and around 140,000 of them need access to sign language. The German Federal Statistical Office reports approx. 310,000 strongly hearing-impaired people living in Germany in 2015. This includes both deaf as well as hard of hearing people, and also those, who experience a hearing loss later in life. The spectrum and definition of hearing loss is broad. Here, the focus lays solely on sign language usage, instead of the exact hearing status. Deaf, hearing impaired and hearing people can be members of a sign language community, if their first language or preferred language is a sign language. Here, we report on the sign language community of the German Sign Language, also called Deutsche Gebärdensprache (DGS).
This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant Agreement No 693349.