Signing Hands Across the Water An International Festival of Sign Language Poetry from the United Kindom and the United States On March 16th – 18th 2012, Swarthmore College  in Pennsylvania, USA, celebrates sign language poetry. Sign language poets from Britain and America will come together  and explore this rich and beautiful art form with members of College, the Deaf Community and visitors from the wider community. The festival will include: Friday March 16th, 7pm [...]

With this lesson, I wanted to use iPads as a recording tool instead of being the main focus. My class is exploring the different parameters of ASL: handshape, location, and movement. There are two others (palm orientation and non-manual markers) but I’m saving those for a later unit. I have a funny relationship with the ASL parameters. Sometimes I feel this topic acts like a crutch for ASL-as-L1 teaching. You [...]

  Ninety-five percent of deaf children have hearing parents. What does that mean? It means that many of us are used to being the only deaf person in the family, in the community, or in school unless we are at a deaf school. It means that our family is our first introduction to the ways that hearing people view deafness and deaf children, and the ways that they pass along [...]

The Washington Times has a great article here about how the H Street corridor in Washington, DC near Gallaudet University is now a hot spot for deaf friendly bars, restaurants, and clubs.  As much as 10 percent of any given establishments’ revenue comes from deaf patrons from the area. The amazing thing is that this has taken place during a development boom on the H Street corridor; many new businesses have [...]

A concept clouds the minds of mankind, the concept of the importance of human speech.  This pernicious idea has caused suffering to deaf people around the world. Human speech is unique in that it requires the organ of the ear to function.  It doesn’t matter if you are a Bushman of the Kalahari desert or an urbane Londoner, a Thai masseuse or fat Eskimo.  Human speech, via various spoken languages, [...]

Often, deaf children learn to sign so that they can communicate their needs and also learn in schools for the deaf. However, signing is not the only method of communication. In schools today, there is a Maternal Reflective Method, sometimes called Oral Reflective Method, which teaches partially or fully deaf children how to learn and talk instead of just signing. This has a number of benefits. The following includes a [...]

A group of French hackers and developers have put together a cool demo of the Xbox Kinect understanding French sign language.  Right now, it only supports two words (bonjour and desole, hello and sorry respectively). Read more at Popular Science. I was waiting for this to happen, after seeing so many hacks and cool tricks being done with the Kinect.  As the article says though, the Kinect’s camera is probably [...]

Convo has just announced that they have placed what is, quite possibly, the world’s first billboard by the deaf for the deaf.  I wanted to take a moment to discuss this announcement in two specific contexts:  that of advertising, and that of the fact of the announcement itself. The Advertisement First, the advertising.  The billboard depicts sign language in a manner that is uncompromising; it does not try to explain [...]

Imagine for a moment:  A culture in which you are added to involuntarily.  And even as you are added, your parents most likely are not. That culture would be a strange and wondrous one, indeed.  What are the implications of a culture like this existing?  There’s sure to be confusion and resentment on the parents’ end. Deaf culture is that rare culture in which one, a majority of its members [...]

Before heading to the World Federation of the Deaf Congress in Madrid, Spain, I went to Paris, France to visit famous landmarks such as the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, and Versailles. On the third day, I decided to visit the Institution Nationale des Sourds a’ Paris, the Deaf institute where Laurent Clerc studied under the famous Abbe de l’Epee. Obviously the school wasn’t listed in the Triple-A TourGuide of Paris, [...]