Deaf education
As Deaf education and sign language research continued to evolve, so did the perception of ASL. With the publication of the "Dictionary of American Sign Language", ASL began to be recognized as a legitimate language. The greater acceptance of ASL as a language led to standardization and the development of a prestige dialect, which was based upon the signs used at Gallaudet University. Despite this standardization, ASL has regional, distinct accents similar to those of spoken languages. Dialects that are different from the standard one, and especially those spoken by marginalized groups, are often stigmatized. As a non-standard dialect, BASL is stigmatized by signers and considered to be inferior to prestige dialects of ASL. This difference in prestige has led BASL speakers to code switch to a prestige dialect when speaking with different groups of people, despite BASL being mutually intelligible with other dialects of ASL.