#if the parents hadn't made a choice to learn their Deaf daughter's language

[fallenrocket]

Shoutout to Maya's family in Echo, because every single one of them could sign. Now, it's true that none of them were especially great at it. I thought it was realistic that some of Skully's lines got really simplistic/stilted, because he didn't know how to say something in a more fluent manner. And when Henry was trying to interpret for Maya with the mortician, I liked the moment where she rattled off some medical jargon and he just shrugged.

But all of them signed, from Maya's grandparents, to her dad in flashbacks, to her uncle, to her cousins. I got the impression that Chula probably started the whole thing when Taloa was young, so Maya was born into an already-signing family. And that is huge. When I worked as an interpreter in a public school, I can't tell you how many kids I worked with who only had the chance to fully communicate with their parents on the few times a year they came to school for conferences/meetings and had access to an interpreter. 90% of Deaf people are born into hearing families, and so many of those families don't learn their Deaf child's language.

And keep in mind, Maya has been living in New York for 20 years. There's no mention of video chats with the family members she was still in touch with, so that means everyone kept up their signing for literal decades even though Maya wasn't around anymore.

I love that, besides the main benefit of being able to build a meaningful relationship with their granddaughter/daughter/niece/cousin, this knowledge helps them out in other ways. Skully covertly rags on Biscuits in front of customers in ASL when he's interfering at the pawn shop. Henry warns Bonnie off by discreetly signing at his side so Fisk's goons won't notice. Bonnie pretends to interpret for Maya with Fisk's goons but really communicates with her in secret so they can figure out how they're going to escape.