Mikayla Smith, a meteorologist from Oklahoma, is making TV weather forecasting a lot more accessible to a wider audience and in a way is stirring interest in meteorology for the future generation of forecasters. She started the program while reporting in the Sherman, Texas area.

Mikayla got her introduction to American Sign Language as a small girl in Rockwall when her mom took special education courses in college and worked as a special education teacher. Through her many years of learning ASL, she has noticed the difficulties that Deaf and hard of hearing people face in attempting to stay informed of breaking news as well as current weather conditions. She's passionate about employing ASL to share weather conditions to the D/HoH population.

Videos of Mikayla’s weather reports have quickly gone viral. She does hope that her signing of weather reports will motivate other forecasters to learn sign language. She says she is happy to see the strong impact her signed forecasts have had on the general public. She does hope the new signing movement will begin to spread, therefore helping special communities that may not usually be able to get a hold of news reports as well as weather reports on a regular basis.

As a lot more weather forecasters and other people in the news media learn to sign their reports, they could relate better with the Deaf and hard of hearing and even establish a trend of greater inclusiveness for individuals with different communication needs in the field of information gathering and distribution.

In response to the need to better her ASL skills, Mikayla says she is a little out of practice with her signing but is making certain to carry out the research that is important to become a better D/HoH supporter, and in the interim making big progress toward greater accessibility to news and weather for everyone.