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Meteorologist Gets Famous After Using American Sign Language in Her Weather Forecasts

Mikayla Smith, a meteorologist from Oklahoma, is making TV weather forecasting more accessible to a wider audience and in a way is stirring interest in meteorology for the future generation of forecasters. She began the program while reporting in the Sherman, Texas area.

Mikayla was introduced to American Sign Language as a little girl in Rockwall when her mother took special education courses while attending college and worked as a special education teacher. Throughout her years of learning ASL, she's observed the challenges that Deaf and hard of hearing individuals experience in attemping to be updated of breaking news reports as well as the latest weather conditions. She's passionate about employing ASL to convey weather conditions to the D/HoH population.

Video clips of Mikayla’s weather forecasts have quickly become trending. She does hope that her signing of weather forecasts will motivate other forecasters to understand and learn sign language. She says she is delighted to see the powerful impact her signed reports have had on the public. She hopes the new signing movement will begin to spread, and thus helping special communities that may not usually be able to get a hold of news as well as weather reports on a regular basis.

As more and more weather forecasters and others in the news media understand how to sign their reports, they could relate better with the Deaf and hard of hearing and even establish a trend of greater inclusiveness for all those with various communication needs in the field of information gathering and syndication.

In reaction to the need to improve her sign language skills, Mikayla says she is quite out of practice with her signing however is making certain to do the research necessary to become a better D/HoH ally, and in the meantime she is making significant progress toward greater accessibility to news reports and weather reports for all.

For the full story, click the link below:

https://www.startasl.com/meteorologist-gets-popular-after-using-american-sign-language-in-her-forecasts/