The advent of videophones has made it easier for members of the Deaf community to communicate with each other throughout the nation. Videophones allow members of the Deaf community to more easily interact with each other and to interact with people outside the Deaf community with the help of interpreters. The interpreters have to go through training programs and thus learn a standardized form of ASL. This is in contrast to the vernaculars of members of the Deaf community that did not attend these residential schools. Historically, residential schools for the deaf were a huge proponent of the standardization of ASL as children would attend schools for the deaf and learn classes in ASL. However, recently there has been a shift to send deaf children to hearing schools where they learn standard American English and actually have no formal instruction in ASL. Thus, interpreters are exposed to more standardized variants of ASL, whereas members of the Deaf community are more likely to learn home signs and nonstandard version of ASL. The interpreters therefore try to incorporate the Deaf consumers' signs into their interpretation, but this is not always possible to do so. Statistically, it seems interpreters have a strong resistance to incorporating signs into the conversation that were seen as non-ASL. This leads to some exposure of standardized signs from the interpreter to the Deaf callers, but also leads to less use of regional signs by the interpreters, aiding with the standardization of ASL.
