About the data · US Deaf Impact Map

Five maps use the same Census extract. The year is on the map status line.

Total shows people with a hearing difficulty and total spending power built from local income. Disposable income is what remains after that place's housing, food, and health-care share of income is deducted.
ASL applies one national estimate of primary ASL users to that count, then the same income scale. Disposable income deducts the same share.
Interpreting shows listed ASL interpreting agencies. A county is colored only when a listing published an address or ZIP there. A marker appears when the listing published a full street address.
Services covers businesses, NGOs, and government entities that are run by or provide services to the deaf community. Interpreting agencies are counted on the Interpreting map. The same address rule colors counties and places markers.
Educational counts listed schools against that population, with the same county and marker rules.

Known issues

Unresolved. One ASL share everywhere. 3.26% is applied to every state and county. Places with larger Deaf communities, such as Rochester, New York, and Washington, D.C., are undercounted. Rural counties with more older adults can look high because the Census hearing-difficulty rate is higher there, and ASL use was not measured locally.
Unresolved. County income ratio is the state ratio. Each state uses its own Cornell 2024 hearing-household income ratio. Counties use that state ratio. The report does not publish a county ratio, so earnings differences inside a state are not in that step. Regional prices are a separate adjustment.
Unresolved. Coverage is a directory. Interpreting, Services, and Educational each count listed organizations. They do not count freelance interpreters, unlisted offices, or how much service a listing provides. An empty county means no listing was placed there.
Unresolved. Counties outside a published metro keep the state cost-of-living share. BEA publishes a housing-rent parity for metropolitan areas, not for each nonmetropolitan county. Puerto Rico has no consumption table and no price parity, so its disposable income stays blank.
Holds. Hearing difficulty is the B18102 “yes” count for the civilian noninstitutionalized population, kept separate from Deaf identity and ASL use.
Holds. Household size and median household income are the local ACS figures. National spending power is the sum of the state results.
Holds. The income ratio is the state’s own published ratio. A ratio above 1 is kept. Unemployment is the local all-worker rate, applied after that ratio.
Holds. Women and men come from the B18102 sex cells. The spending split uses B20002 median earnings of all workers with earnings, and the two dollar amounts add back to that place’s spending power.
Holds. Staff-size and revenue estimates on interpreting listings stay off the maps and out of the coverage index.
Holds. Disposable income is spending power minus a per-person cost of living. Each state share is 2024 BEA spending on housing and utilities, food bought for home, and health care, divided by that state's personal income. A county in a published metro scales the housing slice by that metro's rent parity. The 2024 Consumer Expenditure Survey is the household reference: housing, including rent, is 25.2% of before-tax income, food is 9.8%, and health care is 5.9%.

Disclaimer

Hearing difficulty, household income, household size, and unemployment are American Community Survey estimates. The ± figures are the published 90% margins of error. They are not counts of Deaf identity or of ASL use.

Spending power is a scale of local income. Disposable income is what remains after the published housing, food, and health-care share is deducted. That share is not a budget survey of people with a hearing difficulty. Neither figure is measured spending, wages, after-tax income, or program dollars. Potential ASL users are not a Census count. They are 3.26% of the local hearing-difficulty count: the midpoint of 250,000–500,000 primary ASL users, divided by 11.5 million. Hearview cites that range from Gallaudet University research and pairs it with about 11.5 million people who report serious trouble hearing. The range includes hearing children of Deaf adults. The same share is used in every state and county. NIDCD reports much wider hearing-loss figures, including about 15% of adults with some trouble hearing. Those figures are not the ASL share.

Staff size and annual revenue on interpreting listings are estimates unless the note cites a filing or a dated news report. The usual estimate is 1 person and $85,000 for a site that reads as an independent interpreter, and 5 people and $425,000 for another agency that does not publish a staff count. Those figures stay off the maps and out of the coverage index.

Hearing difficulty

People are counted from Census table B18102, Sex by Age by Hearing Difficulty. The question asks whether a person is deaf or has serious difficulty hearing. The map sums the published “yes” cells. That total includes deaf people, hard of hearing people, and others who answered yes. It covers the civilian noninstitutionalized population. It does not count ASL users, and it does not count people by Deaf identity.

The share is that count divided by the table total for the same geography. “Compared with U.S. share” is the state share minus the national share, in percentage points. The national share is the sum of state counts divided by the sum of state population totals.

Spending power

People ÷ household size × household income × income ratio × employment rate

The panel walks through the same product in pieces.

People: The hearing-difficulty count, with the Census 90% margin of error.
Household size: Average number of people in an occupied home, from Census table B25010. It is the average for all households in that state or county, not households that include a person with a hearing difficulty. Dividing the person count by this size estimates how many household incomes the count represents. A county uses its own average. The U.S. figure is the hearing-difficulty-weighted average of the state sizes. The dollar total is still the sum of each state’s own product.
Unadjusted: People divided by household size, times the median income of all households in that state or county, from Census table B19013. The U.S. unadjusted total adds each state’s own product.
Income ratio: Median household income for households that include a working-age person, ages 21–64, with a hearing disability, divided by the median for households with no working-age person with a disability. The source is Erickson, Lee, and von Schrader, 2024 Disability Status Report, Cornell University Yang-Tan Institute, from the 2024 American Community Survey. The U.S. figures are $84,300 ± $1,410 and $98,500 ± $310. Each state uses its own pair. A county uses its state’s ratio, because the report does not publish counties. The ratio is used as published, including where hearing-disability households have the higher income.
Income gap: Unadjusted dollars minus unadjusted dollars times the income ratio. The percent next to the U.S. gap is that dollar gap divided by the U.S. unadjusted total. Because states have different ratios, that percent can differ from the single U.S. benchmark of $84,300 / $98,500.
Unemployment: Unemployed people divided by the civilian labor force, from Census table B23025. The rate covers every civilian worker in the geography. A higher unemployment rate among people with a hearing difficulty would make this offset too small.
Unemployment offset: Applied after the income ratio. It is the income-adjusted amount times the unemployment rate. Employment rate means one minus that unemployment rate.
Spending power: Unadjusted × income ratio × employment rate. The same figure is unadjusted minus the income gap minus the unemployment offset.
Cost of living: A place's share of income for housing, food, and health care, calculated per person and then deducted. The Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey for 2024 is the household reference: income before taxes averaged $104,207, housing was $26,266 (25.2%, including rent, owned dwellings, and utilities), food was $10,169 (9.8%), and health care was $6,197 (5.9%). The map's state percents are not that one national survey rate. Each state uses Bureau of Economic Analysis personal consumption expenditures for 2024: housing and utilities, food and beverages purchased for off-premises consumption, and health care, divided by that state's personal income. Those dollars already include local prices. A county in a published metropolitan area scales only the housing slice by that metro's housing-rent parity divided by the state rent parity. A county outside a published metro keeps the state share, because this release does not publish a consumption basket or a rent parity for each nonmetropolitan county. Puerto Rico has neither table, so its cost-of-living and disposable-income lines stay blank. The national deduction is the sum of the state deductions. The national remainder keeps Puerto Rico's spending power, because there is no share to deduct there.
Disposable income: Spending power minus the cost-of-living deduction. It is what remains of the income scale after that housing, food, and health-care share, not after-tax income, measured spending, or program dollars. ASL disposable income uses the same share per potential ASL user.

Low and high bounds move only the person count, down and up by its 90% margin. Household income, household size, the income ratio, the employment rate, and the cost-of-living share stay fixed, and those adjustments are applied to both bounds. Household size has its own margin of error. That margin is shown next to the size and is not folded into the dollar bounds.

How the map uses a number

Measure	What the color shows
Hearing-difficulty rate	Share of the civilian noninstitutionalized population.
Hearing-difficulty count	The B18102 person count.
Spending power	The adjusted dollar figure above. On the Total map. Disposable income is the later price adjustment and is not the color.
Gender ratio	Women with a hearing difficulty divided by men with a hearing difficulty. On the ASL map the same ratio is the potential-ASL split, because each sex uses the 3.26% share. On the Total and ASL maps.
Spending comparison	Women's spending power divided by men's, after weighting each sex by its median earnings. On the Total and ASL maps.
Unemployment	The all-worker unemployment rate.
Household income	Median income of all households, before the hearing-income ratio.
Institutions per 100,000	Listed organizations divided by the hearing-difficulty count, scaled to 100,000 people.
Illustrative coverage index	A 0–100 score described below. It is separate from spending power.
ASL spending power	Spending power for potential ASL users. On the ASL map. ASL disposable income is the later price adjustment and is not the color.
Potential ASL users	3.26% of the local hearing-difficulty count. On the ASL map.
Listed agencies	The count of those interpreting agencies. On the Interpreting map.
ASL users per agency	Potential ASL users divided by listed interpreting agencies. A higher number is thinner coverage, so the darker color is the lower number. On the Interpreting map.
Listed services	Businesses, NGOs, and government entities run by or serving the deaf community. Interpreting agencies are excluded. On the Services map.
People per service	The hearing-difficulty count divided by listed services. A higher number is thinner coverage. On the Services map.
Listed schools	Schools in the registry. On the Educational map.
People per school	The hearing-difficulty count divided by listed schools. A higher number is thinner coverage. On the Educational map.

Spending power, person counts, ASL users, and ASL users per agency use a log color scale when the largest value is at least 20 times the smallest, so smaller places stay visible. The Interpreting legend lists only the values on the map. A hatched area has a hearing-difficulty margin of error at least as large as the estimate. The legend includes that hatch only when an area on the current map is hatched.

Illustrative coverage index

The index is optional. It does not change spending power. It is an average of four scores: government, schools, nonprofit, and business. Each score blends three parts: hearing-difficulty rate (45%), all-household median income (25%), and a term for listed institutions (30%). The rate is compared with the unweighted average of state rates. Income is compared with the median of the state median incomes. Those baselines are for this index only. They are different from the population-weighted U.S. share on the state panel.

The institution term uses reported dollars from the spreadsheet or an IRS Form 990. Category placeholders are left out. Government and business dollars are divided by the hearing-difficulty count times $4,200, then passed through a curve that flattens as the share grows. Nonprofit dollars are divided by the hearing-difficulty count and passed through the same kind of curve. Schools use the square root of listed schools per 100,000 people with a hearing difficulty. A state with no listed organizations scores 0. A missing population leaves the index blank.

The $4,200 figure is an assumption used only inside this index. It is a stand-in for yearly accessibility-related demand per person. Changing it would require a new data build. It does not change spending power, and there is no control for it on the map.

Women and men

Census table B18102 is already divided by sex. The map adds the “with a hearing difficulty” cells for women and the same cells for men. The gender ratio is that pair of counts. Potential ASL users apply the 3.26% share to each sex, so the ratio matches the hearing-difficulty ratio.

The spending comparison splits the place’s spending power between women and men. The split uses each sex’s count and that sex’s median earnings, from Census table B20002. Those earnings are for all people with earnings, not people with a hearing difficulty. A lower earnings ratio gives women a smaller share of the dollars than their share of the count. On the ASL map the same weights split ASL spending power. Women’s and men’s dollars add back to that place’s spending-power total.

Potential ASL users

Hearing-difficulty count × 3.26%

The Census does not ask who uses American Sign Language. Hearview’s 2025 summary, citing Gallaudet University research, puts primary ASL users at 250,000 to 500,000 people. That range includes Deaf people and hearing children of Deaf adults. The same article cites about 11.5 million people with serious trouble hearing. The map uses the midpoint of that range, 375,000 ÷ 11,500,000, which is 3.26%. Every state and every county hearing-difficulty count is multiplied by that share.

NIDCD’s quick statistics describe a wider group: about 15% of adults report some trouble hearing, and about 1 in 8 people ages 12 and older has hearing loss in both ears. Those figures are not counts of ASL users, so they are not the share used here. Hearview also cites about 1 million people who are functionally deaf. That group is larger than primary ASL users, and it is not the ASL count.

The same percentage is used everywhere. Neither source publishes ASL use by state or county. Rochester, New York, and Washington, D.C., are examples of places with larger Deaf communities than this share can show. The ± figure is the ACS margin on the hearing-difficulty count, scaled by 3.26%. The published range is the local count times 2.17% and times 4.35%, the low and high of 250,000–500,000 over 11.5 million.

ASL spending power runs the same household-size, income, income-ratio, and unemployment steps on that estimate. It is 3.26% of the hearing-difficulty spending power for the same place. ASL disposable income then deducts the same housing, food, and health-care share, using potential ASL users as the person count.

Interpreting coverage

The Interpreting map counts registry rows labeled ASL interpreting. It is not a census of working interpreters, and it does not include the individual RID member registry. A state total counts every such listing in that state. ASL users per agency divides potential ASL users by the listed agencies. ASL users per agency is blank when a state or county has no listed agency.

A county is colored only when a listing can be placed there. If the listing published a street address, the county is the one returned by the Census Bureau geocoder for that address. If the street did not match, or the listing published only a ZIP code, the county is the 2020 ZIP Code Tabulation Area county with the largest land-area overlap. A ZIP can cross a county line, so that placement is the main county for the ZIP, not a surveyed office location. Listings without a ZIP stay in the state total and are not spread across counties. An empty county means no listing was placed there. It does not mean the county has no interpreting service.

A marker is drawn when the listing published a house number and street, city, state, and ZIP, and the Census geocoder returned coordinates for that street. A ZIP-only listing colors the county and does not get a marker.

Where an agency site published a street, phone, or email, that detail is copied onto the spreadsheet. Staff size and annual revenue are estimates unless a note cites a filing or a dated news report. The usual estimate is 1 person for a site that reads as an independent interpreter, and 5 people for any other agency that does not publish a staff count. Revenue is that headcount times $85,000, standing in for 1,000 billable hours at $85 an hour. Notes that call a figure an estimate, or say it is not a current filing, keep it out of the coverage index. Spending power does not use these figures.

Service coverage

The Services map covers businesses, NGOs, and government entities that are run by or provide services to the deaf community. People per service divides the hearing-difficulty count by those listings. Interpreting agencies are excluded and stay on the Interpreting map. A school stays on the Educational map.

County color and markers follow the Interpreting rules. A county is colored when a listing published a street or ZIP that can be placed there. A marker requires a full street address with Census coordinates. An empty county means no listing was placed there.

Educational coverage

The Educational map counts registry rows whose category is school. People per school divides the hearing-difficulty count by those schools. A school counts on the Interpreting map only when it is also flagged as an interpreting service. It does not count as a Service.

County color and markers follow the same street, ZIP, and full-address rules as Interpreting and Services.

Organizations

The institution list is a curated registry of schools, agencies, nonprofits, and businesses. Coverage of a state is as complete as the directories that were used for that state.

Business, School, Nonprofit, Government: The category used to group a row and to place it in the coverage index.
Deafopia Directory: A deaf-owned business from the Deafopia directory. “Area code” means the state was inferred from the videophone number. Street, city, and website stay empty when the directory did not publish them.
Manual Seed: A row entered from a named institution, such as a deaf school. “Manual Seed + ProPublica” also has IRS Form 990 figures from ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer.
RIT InterpNET: An ASL interpreting service taken from RIT InterpNET’s state lists, up to five names per state in the order printed there. That order is the directory order. Phone, email, and street are copied only when the agency’s own site published them for that state.
RID Agency Directory: An interpreting agency that is a current organizational member in the RID Interpreter Agency/Referral Service directory. Individual interpreter names are not copied.
VP: Videophone.
Reported: The state was published with the listing.

Sources

U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 5-year estimates. Tables B18102, B19013, B20002, B25010, and B23025. Margins of error are the published 90% margins. The national person-count margin is the square root of the sum of squared state margins.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey, 2024, for the national household reference: housing, food, and health care as shares of income before taxes.
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, personal consumption expenditures by state and personal income by state, 2024, for each state's housing, food, and health-care share of personal income.
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Price Parities by State and Metro Area, 2024 housing-rent index. A county in a published metro scales the housing slice by that metro's rent parity. County-to-metro assignment uses the Census Bureau July 2023 CBSA delineation (OMB Bulletin 23-01).
Cornell Yang-Tan Institute, 2024 Disability Status Report, for the hearing-disability household income ratio.
Hearview, “How Many Deaf People Are in the US?”, citing Gallaudet University research, for the 250,000–500,000 primary ASL range and the 11.5 million hearing-difficulty comparison.
NIDCD, Quick Statistics About Hearing, for the broader hearing-loss figures that are not used as the ASL share.
Deafopia, for deaf-owned businesses.
RIT InterpNET, for interpreting agencies by state.
RID Interpreter Agency/Referral Service directory, for interpreting agencies that are current organizational members. Individual interpreter names are not copied.
U.S. Census Bureau geocoder and the 2020 ZIP Code Tabulation Area to county relationship file, for placing an interpreting listing in a county.
ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, for Form 990 revenue, expenses, and assets when a row has an employer identification number.