White House To Provide ASL Interpretation At Congressional Speech For First Time: Report
Source: Huffington Post
The White House will reportedly provide American Sign Language interpretation at President Joe Biden’s address to Congress next week, something deaf activists said no previous presidential administration has done.
ABC News was the first to report the news.
The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) praised the decision as an important step in the Biden administration’s commitment to accessibility.
“To the best of our knowledge, this is a historical first for the White House to have an American Sign Language interpreter during a Presidential address to Congress,” NAD CEO Howard A. Rosenblum said in a statement to HuffPost. “We commend the White House for taking steps to ensure accessibility for all who are watching, including deaf and hard of hearing people.”
Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/white-house-asl-interpretation-215705392.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
I mean most, if not all "government" remarks, whether federal, state, or local, normally have had someone signing on the sidelines (and shown in a split-screen when broadcast) and much of that was implemented after passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
This to me seems like a no duh! 
(I know that there is closed-captioning going on with broadcasts)
I suppose since there are stenographers on the House/Senate floors doing transcriptions, they figured people could "wait" for the transcript but come on... 
I get that trying to do ASL in the middle of a regular floor proceeding would be a nightmare but for speeches that happen in Joint Sessions of Congress, there's no reason why that service couldn't have been provided.
