I read somewhere that…40,000 new blogs are being created daily. With this degree of popularity, it’s a no-brainer to say blogs are here to stay. As quickly as they surged onto the internet space, they surely can fade into rusted cooper wires just as quickly. But for now, let’s say they’re a permament part of the internet.

The other permament parts are e-mail, web, pager/phones, right? While the internet is slowly making way for video, and eventually voice conversations, the internet has mostly limited itself to text. Much to the deaf user’s delight. In this great technological advance of recent, the deaf user hasn’t been left behind, almost appearing as if on purpose.

With the advent of blogging, not including protected sites, writings are more than ever public. Blogs, which has simplified the process of publishing content to the web, is encouraging the breeding of emormous quantities, paragraphs after paragraphs, sentences after sentences, and even photos after photos.

They all keep us in touch with our friends and family, and those intersted in our topics. Hurricane Katrina spurred numerous blogs that brings us storm news updates faster than our local and national channels. And we’re reading the words of real people. Real experiences.

I’m sure most of you agree with me on most points I’ve illustrated above. The blog has been an exciting new thing to arrive on the internet frontier, right? What about those that are not able to enjoy them as much as the average American? Somewhere on the internet is a group of people that never or rarely have enjoyed such benefits.

I’m not talking about the “Digital Divide”. Although computers are increasingly affordable, a good percentage of Americans still do not have computers, much less internet access in their homes. While that remains a pitiful situation, what I’m looking at is the literacy level of deaf Americans.

The blog has again pushed the digital gap further apart for web surfers that cannot read or write at or above the 8th grade level. Unprotected blogs are so public, yet so personal. They’d rather not make laughingstocks out of themselves by showing how well or badly they write. The blog’s strongest points secretly leaves a group of people behind to live their lives anonymously.

As the internet forges ahead at lightning speed fueled even more so by Stanford University and Lucent scientists, we are given more reasons to remember that deaf education must do everything it can to keep up.