Johnni and I have been deeply involved within the deaf community and have over 22 years of combined experience. We are both currently working as certified sign language interpreters in California and teach online.
Johnni Gorges works as the lead interpreter for an interpreting agency in California and oversees the training of a team of over 30 interpreters.
Chris Gorges works in education and has worked with several school administrations to help meet the needs of their deaf students and has mentored and trained other educational interpreters.
Over the years we have been honored that we have been able to serve the deaf community and in the process help others overcome the various challenges of learning a new language so they can be a part of this beautiful community.
We established ASL Basics so we can help others overcome the different challenges that come with learning the language.
This is particularly important for parents with deaf children. As educators and interpreters, we’ve seen first hand the long-term effects that language deprivation can have on a child.
As parents ourselves, we understand how overwhelming being a parent can be, let alone learning a new language at the same time. We are here to help you and want to make learning sign language as accessible as possible.
If you are a busy parent that has a deaf or non-verbal child, a teacher with a deaf student, or are someone that would like to make sign language a career … first I want to commend you for accepting the challenge of learning sign language. Secondly, I want to assure you that we will do our utmost to help you through the difficult process of learning a language, get past the struggles, and attain the fluency you are looking for.
Support our mission
ASL Basics was created with the goal of offering free educational content to allow anyone the opportunity to learn sign language online. I am very grateful that so far we have been able to do just that. We have enabled tens of thousands of people from dozens of countries to learn sign language.
According to the National Institute on Deafness (NIDCD) as many as 3 of every 1,000 children are born with hearing loss and more than 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents.
Your support would mean that we could continue to produce free educational content to empower hearing parents to communicate with their deaf or hard-of-hearing children, teachers the ability to directly communicate with their deaf students, or afford anyone the opportunity to learn sign language and be a part of the deaf community.