This deaf-led work critically explores Deaf Tech, challenging conventional understandings of technologies ‘for’ deaf people as merely assistive and accessible, since these understandings are predominantly embedded in medical and audist ideologies. By employing participatory speculative workshops, deaf participants from different European countries envisioned technologies on Eyeth - a mythical planet inhabited by deaf people - centered on their perspectives and curiosities. The results present a series of alternative socio-technical narratives that illustrate qualitative aspects of technologies desired by deaf people. This study advocates for expanding the scope of deaf technological landscapes, emphasizing the needs of establishing deaf-centered HCI, including the development of methods and concepts that truly prioritize deaf experiences in the design of technologies intended for their use.
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This presentation explores various transformations that inform Deaf Studies research, ranging from transformations in deaf networks to larger sign language networks and transformations in applied linguistics, society, and language ideologies, and the related potential impact on sign language policy and revitalisation. After discussing some new research lenses in Deaf Studies, such as visual methods, the presentation suggests some ways forward for Deaf Studies in terms of research priorities and rights discourses.
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Eight deaf scholars come together to reflect on their experiences with exclusionary practices in the academy that contribute to feelings of imposterism, otherness, and not-belonging. The combined powers of ableism, audism, and negative attitudes about signed languages generate tension as deaf academics affirm their place within higher education institutions and fields of research. Across individual and shared experiences, they narrate about hostility towards disability and sign languages, reflecting on how such hostilities work towards excluding signing deaf scholars. As disability rights legislation increased access for deaf academics, gaps exist in which ableism continues to function as an institutional barrier. In spite of exclusionary practices and negative attitudes, deaf academics have organized ways to be resilient as they argue they make valuable contributions to scholarly discourses.
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Due to emancipation process there is need for information on Deaf culture - Is there a Deaf Culture in the Netherlands? - If so what is it? How can we define it? - What are priorities in research? - How best disseminate results in Deaf community? - Lobby for rights of Deaf people (Unesco 1994; UN Convention on the rights of Persons with Disabilities 2006)
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This paper discusses the meaning of inclusive education for deaf learners in a way that acknowledges the diversity of learner identities, and outlines problems with normative definitions of inclusive education as advanced by recent interpretations of Article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This discussion calls on us to reconsider how the concepts of inclusion and segregation are understood in education for all learners with intersectional identities. We outline the legislative history of the CRPD and Article 24, show the active involvement of deaf advocacy organisations, and highlight contradictions with this history in the CRPD Committee’s recent General Comment No. 4 on Article 24. We provide examples of innovative models of inclusive education for deaf learners that provide an education in sign language and discuss the implications of these arguments for inclusive education as a whole.
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Book review of Critical perspectives on plurilingualism in deaf education. Kristin Snoddon and Joanne C. Weber (Eds.), Bristol: Multilingual Matters. 2021. 272 pp.
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In this paper, we report on interview data collected from 14 Deaf leaders across seven countries (Australia, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States) regarding their perspectives on signed language interpreters. Using a semi-structured survey questionnaire, seven interpreting researchers interviewed two Deaf leaders each in their home countries. Following transcription of the data, the researchers conducted a thematic analysis of the comments. Four shared themes emerged in the data, as follows: (a) variable level of confidence in interpreting direction, (b) criteria for selecting interpreters, (c) judging the competence of interpreters, and (d) strategies for working with interpreters. The results suggest that Deaf leaders share similar, but not identical, perspectives about working with interpreters, despite differing conditions that hold regarding how interpreting services are provided in their respective countries. When compared to prior studies of Deaf leaders’ perspectives of interpreters, these data indicate some positive trends in Deaf leaders’ experience with interpreters; however, results also point to a need for further work in creating an atmosphere of trust, enhancing interpreters’ language fluency, and developing mutual collaboration between Deaf leaders and signed language interpreters. De url van de uitgeversversie van het artikel is: http://dx.doi.org/10.1556/084.2017.18.1.5
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We present a number of methodological recommendations concerning the online evaluation of avatars for text-to-sign translation, focusing on the structure, format and length of the questionnaire, as well as methods for eliciting and faithfully transcribing responses.
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In this chapter we discuss the Surinam Deaf community as a linguistic minority with a language of their own: an as yet unnamed sigh language. This language is sometimes called Surinam Sign Language bu could easily also be named Paramaribo Sign Lanaguage or even Kennedy School Sign Language. Ther ehas been no research on this sign variety, so its structure and possible varieties are unknown. Here, we will refer to this language as the local sign variety,
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Posterpresentatie op Conferentie. Introduction: Classifiers are handshapes (sometimes combined with a specific orientation) that, when combined with the other parameters of movement and location form a ‘verb of motion or location’. There is a limited body of research available on the acquisition of classifiers by children. The available studies have focused on deaf children of deaf (DOD) parents, who are native signers. Results show that classifiers emerge at 3 years and approach an adult like level at the age of 9 (Beal Alvarez & Easterbrooks, 2013). This small study was set out to investigate the production of classifiers in DOH children who acquire Sign Language of the Netherlands. Our expectation was that DOH children produce classifiers, but fail to use them correctly in all instances due to lack of pragmatic control (Slobin et al., 2003). Method: Four children (two girls, two boys) were recruited at a school for the Deaf in The Netherlands (5;10 – 6;8 years). All children were deaf or severely hearing-impaired from birth. Children used (sign supported) Dutch at home and sign language at school and had approximately three years of exposure to sign language. Narratives (Frog-story) were recorded. The recordings were transcribed and analyzed using ELAN-software. Analysis focused on type of classifier (entity and handling) and accuracy in production. Results: The children produced 22 classifiers in total, 20 entity classifiers and 2 handling classifiers. Ten percent of the entity classifiers was incorrect; the handshape to express the entity did not match the handshape frequently selected for that entity. Conclusion: DOH children produce classifiers after three years of exposure to sign language. Errors in classifier production involved errors in handshape selection. This compares to type of errors frequently found for DOD children. Results will be discussed in relation to the iconic and gestural properties of classifiers (Cormier et al., 2012). References: Beal-Alvarez, J.S. & Easterbrooks, S.R. (2013). Increasing children’s ASL classifier production: A multicomponent intervention. American Annals of the Deaf, 158, 311 – 333. Cormier, K., Quinto-Pozos, D., Sevcikova, Z., Schembri, A. (2012). Lexicalisation and de-lexicalisation processes in sign languages: Comparing depicting constructions and viewpoint gestures. Language & Communication, 32, 329 – 348. Slobin, D., Hoiting, N., Kuntze, K., Lindert, R., Weinberg, A. Pyers, J., Anthony, M., Biederman, Y., Thumann, H. (2003). A cognitive/functional perspective on the acquisition of ‘classifiers’. In: Emmorey, K. (Ed.). Perspectives on classifier constructions in sign languages. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ. Pp 297 – 310.
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