In 1996 Jimmy McCarthy from Florida was the first profoundly deaf speller to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. He ended up tying for 48th place in a field with 247 spellers. The sixth-grader used two hearing aids and had an interpreter who mouthed and signed the words to him. There are only 40,000 words in sign language compared with around 400,000 in most dictionaries – Jimmy’s performance was very impressive!
