“To require the Bureau of the Census to collect information on deafblind individuals, and for other purposes.”
No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section designates the short title of the Act as the “Deafblind Disabled Americans Table Approximation Act” or the “Deafblind DATA Act”. The section states congressional findings on deafblind individuals (i.e., those with concomitant hearing and vision loss), including population estimates of 10,000 children and 40,000 adults (National Center on Deafblindness), 70,000–100,000 people (National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners), and 2.47 million Americans (Helen Keller National Center); the lack of a centralized count; the need for cross-referencing American Community Survey data on separate hearing and vision impairments; and barriers to information access, communication, development, education, employment, and well-being.
This section directs the Director of the Bureau of the Census to (1) submit to Congress, not later than 180 days after enactment, a report on the feasibility of publishing a specified table and expanding data collection on individuals with combined hearing and vision loss in the American Community Survey (ACS) or successor survey; and (2) beginning in 2026 and annually thereafter, publish on the bureau's public website a table—sorted by state—of ACS respondents who identify as both deaf and blind, including their sex, race, age, employment status, educational attainment, earnings, and poverty status. (The table must exclude personally identifiable information.)