The argument
Legally compliant. Still not understood. Here is why — with receipts.
This argument, signed
The whole page signed by a Deaf creator. International Sign for the global site; your national sign language on your country page. Signed by a Deaf creator, credited by name.
Three gaps
Not a question of ability. A first language that is signed, not written — and a world that never taught the written one.
In plain words
Three things stack up. Most Deaf people never went to school. The ones who did were taught in a language they cannot hear. And captions move faster than anyone can read. Put together, captions alone leave most Deaf people out.
Up to ~90%
The WFD's global survey estimates up to ~90% of Deaf people never attended school; sign-language-medium education existed in only 23 of 93 countries surveyed.
Receipt: WFD global survey (2009)
Reading fluency is made in school. Most of the world's Deaf people never got that school — and where school existed, it was rarely taught in a sign language.
Framing rule we hold ourselves to: the issue is a first language that is signed, not written. Not a label.
About 4th grade
The median deaf school-leaver in the best-resourced deaf-education system reads at about a fourth-grade level.
Receipt: Traxler 2000
Even in the best-resourced deaf-education system on earth, the median school-leaver reads at about a fourth-grade level. Captions are written for adults.
140–230 words a minute
Captions run at 140–230 words per minute; median Deaf comprehension is around 100–140 — and comprehension falls as caption rate rises.
Receipt: Jensema 1998; Burnham 2008; Tyler 2009
Captions outrun comprehension. They arrive in fragments, with no rewind, while the picture keeps moving. The faster they go, the less gets through.
The doctrinal point
In plain words
Accessibility rules check whether captions exist. They do not check whether a Deaf person understood. So a service can pass every test and still fail most Deaf viewers.
The standards behind accessibility law check the artifact: is there a caption track, is it synchronized. They do not check the reader. Sign language sits at the highest, optional level — and no law in the European chain requires it.
The European Union's own Deaf federation says written text alone is not sufficient for most deaf sign language users. We agree, and we show our receipts.
Sign language appears only at WCAG Level AAA, for prerecorded content — no EAA-chain standard requires it.
Receipt: EN 301 549 / WCAG; EUD 2025
The European Accessibility Act has been in force since June 2025.
Receipt: EU Directive 2019/882
About 70 million Deaf people worldwide use a sign language as their first or preferred language.
Receipt: World Federation of the Deaf
The conclusion
Captions are necessary. They are not sufficient. We deliver the modality that reaches everyone.
The same logic, for sight
In plain words
Blind and low-vision people face the same problem from the other side. A video can have a short, rushed audio description that ticks the box and still misses the story. Good description carries the story.
Compliance asks: is there an audio description track? Comprehension asks: did the description carry what the picture was saying? The gap is the same gap.
Audio description on a11y is made by people, who are paid for it, and delivered the same way as sign language: in sync, over the content you already have.
~1 billion
About 1 billion people live with vision impairment that could have been prevented or has yet to be addressed.
Receipt: WHO World Report on Vision
430 million
430 million people live with disabling hearing loss — projected to reach 700 million by 2050.
Receipt: WHO
Two communities, two numbers. We never add them into one.
The argument is performed, not just stated. Each version carries the same content.