Captioning The Word

In Canada, alone, there are approximately 300,000 people who are profoundly deaf, and 2 ½ million more who have some degree of hearing loss.  In all of North America, there are 28 million deaf and hard-of-hearing people. The number of hearing disabled people in Canada has grown dramatically over the past 10 years, and hearing impairment is the fastest growing disability in Canada. It won’t be long before almost 25% of the Canadian population will be over 65. Further, one third of individuals over 65 have a hearing loss that interferes with speech perception and effective communication; the prevalence of hearing loss increasing with age. 

Out of 100 people, 10 have a significant hearing problem. Of those 10 people, one or two use sign language. The rest do not know sign language. Captions benefit both of these groups of people. Society is beginning to understand that they are not reaching about 10% of the populace if their programs and events are not captioned. 

Statistics tell us that 98% of people with hearing loss do not have a church home, and the deaf and hard of hearing are the fourth largest unreached people group in the world. How do we reach all these people for the Kingdom of God?  How do we advance the Christian faith, and reach people who cannot hear?