How American Sign Language Can Help Your Business
There are green dollars, pink dollars and I guess even redneck dollars… well I’m going to suggest another one.
The Deaf or Hard of Hearing dollar.
Yes,you heard right. Even people with hearing difficulties have to go out there in the big world and buy a product or service.
Armed with a pen and a note pad they sometimes struggle their way around shopping malls hoping to see the exact thing they want, so they can just pick it up and head for the checkout.
Hey I do the same when I go to France and haven’t a clue what the word is for an electric drill bit or a bar of soap.
It is so frustrating!
So how much better would it be if your shop or office had dedicated staff to serve customers or clients who were hard of hearing.
You could advertise the fact that not only is English/Spanish/Italian/Russian spoken here …but also American Sign Language.
How many extra customers would you get?
Well lets put it this way, ASL is believed to be the third most used language in The United States
There are between half a million and two million people that use Sign Language as their mother tongue just behind English and Spanish
It seems that 3.68% of the total population is found to be hard of hearing and 0.3% of the total population is functionally Deaf, out of a total population of about 268,000,000 (2005) living souls in the US.
Therefore around 80,000 Americans are functionally Deaf and in total almost ten million Americans are hard of hearing.
So again how many extra clients or customers could you get if even one member of your staff used ASL?
Could you set up a staff training day so that designated staff could learn ASL?
Could you employ an ASL trained interpreter?
Could you employ an ASL user?
Just stop for a minute. Imagine the pleasure a deaf or hard of hearing customer will get if they can communicate with your staff.
Do you think they’ll come back again?
Do you think they’ll tell their friends within the deaf community?
So again how many extra clients or customers do you think you could get if ASL was spoken in your shop or office?
All of the above is possible, but the will to change has to come from above, staff can suggest, but only managers can make things happen.
Greg Dyke, a former Director of the BBC in London, was so frustrated at what was happening within the corporation when it came to getting anything done, especially if it involved change, that he introduced a great slogan Cut The Crap!
In other words if something is worth doing and will benefit the business and the people working in it, then just do it!…. It shouldn’t take a week of meetings to set up a working party that would discuss the problem with a focus group before coming up with a strategy, which might just be implemented within the next 12 months.
If you think providing ASL is right for your business and will also benefit both customers and staff then do something about it..before your competitors read this article and gets in there first.
I’m a UK based radio journalist with one wife, two mortgages and five cats to support.
If my article has whet your appetite, then why not test drive American Sign Language lessons online. You can get a Free 6 Day Mini Course at http://www.usfreeads.com/925409-cls.html
