In a first, the White House plans to provide American Sign Language interpretation for President Joe Biden’s address to Congress next week.
The Biden White House has been providing simultaneous ASL interpretation for its daily news conferences, briefings by its COVID-19 team and remarks by the president and vice president, a practice that began, in part, last year following a lawsuit.
But next week’s address will be the first in which any White House has provided the service for a presidential address to Congress, via a live stream on its website and social media channels.
Biden on Wednesday plans to deliver his first major speech to a joint session of Congress, which in other years — beside a president’s first in office — would be referred to as a State of the Union address.
An American Sign Language interpreter provides interpretation during President Joe Biden’s remarks on April 20, 2021.
As has been the practice in recent months, the interpreter will work out of a room separate from where Biden will actually speak. A second video feed will appear in a small box alongside the stream of Biden’s remarks that the White House shares publicly.
“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,” Howard A. Rosenblum, the chief executive of the National Association of the Deaf, a civil rights group, told ABC News in a statement.
The office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which organizes the annual presidential addresses, did not respond to questions about whether it would be providing its own ASL interpretation.
It was not clear whether the White House’s interpretation would appear anywhere beyond its own, official live stream.
Television networks broadcast their own version of the address different from the official recording. They do the same for White House press conferences, for which they typically do not show the ASL interpreter.
An American Sign Language interpreter provides interpretation during White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s news conference on April 19, 2021.
Rosenblum called on television stations to make the interpretation available.
“We commend the White House for taking steps to ensure accessibility for all who are watching, including deaf and hard of hearing people,” he said. “We urge all TV stations carrying the broadcast to properly display the interpreter in frame or via an appropriately …….