I have a deaf friend who can type a long paragraph with proper capitalization & subordinate clauses, in the time it takes me to hunt and peck a lowercase tweet.

I have a deaf friend who can type a long paragraph with proper capitalization & subordinate clauses, in the time it takes me to hunt and peck a lowercase tweet. But she may not be representative - she comes from an academic/scientist type family and she got a university degree. The average deaf kid may not identify with schooling that much. Anyway, when we hang out she types these long paragraphs on her Sidekick & I reply with more Hemingwayesque prose on my iPhone. But it doesn't approach the speed of oral or signed speech. (Related: try reading out the contents of an hour long chat you have with someone over IM; you'll find the whole thing takes just a few minutes.)