This past year, 2016, Austin, Texas, was ranked No. 2 by Entrepreneur among “the Best Cities for Entrepreneurs.” And, sure, everyone knows Austin for its great music scene, its diverse culinary scene, its high tech.
But what most people don’t realize is that a significant number of the business owners here — some 30 of them that we know — are deaf.
Deaf people own all kinds of businesses, in Austin, and everywhere else. Some are doctors; some, lawyers; some, accountants and computer consultants. Others run auto repair shops, yoga studios and bakeries.
Twitter’s #DeafTalent hashtag further reveals a remarkable number of deaf people in entertainment, including celebrities such as Marlee Matlin, Nyle DiMarco (renowned for being the first deaf person to win ABC’s Dancing With the Stars competition, after Matlin pioneered that effort) and dozens more in film, television and theatre.
Key enablers: legislation and technology
A look at history reveals that deaf people were actually banned from employment in 1906; and, until 1972, deaf children weren’t guaranteed access to public schools. Then, in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act finally prohibited discrimination based on disability, and proved as well to be a turning point for U.S. society understanding, appreciating and including deaf people.
Today, 50 percent of deaf Americans work full-time.
W. Scot Atkins, Ed.D, an assistant professor at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at the Rochester Institute of Technology, speculates that today there are some 1,000 deaf-owned businesses in the United States, up from just over 600 less than a decade ago.
“There’s no way of knowing the exact numbers of deaf-owned business,” Atkins told me, “because there’s imprecise census data, incomplete records on the legal status of certain business and uncertain information about the degree of people’s deafness.”
But beyond the numbers — and the important legislation of recent decades that has increased them — a key reason for the dramatic growth of deaf-owned businesses is a series…