With respect to the hearing impaired, this is over-the-top political correctness run amok. Most if not all deaf viewers have closed-captioning.
Liberals have them front and center. Christie, on the other hand, just delivered his message and got on with it.
It's just a stupid politically-correct gesture. Just put a text crawl on the screen in case the watcher does not have closed captioning.
The number of hearing impaired people is small in any population and I can’t imagine anyone with a hearing problem not making use of the closed captioning systems that are available on just about any TV set sold in the last 10 years. The need for sign language interpreters in these situations is over blown. Here in the Midwest tornado and severe weather warnings are always broadcast with captioning and not sign language interpreters.