Talking in Signs

When a person uses sign language  to communicate, they use their hands as well as mouth – but now a study has found out whether the two are used in unison or separately. Researchers David P. Vinson and colleagues at University College London found that the hand and lip movements are separate in the signer’s brain, not part of the same sign.

The team recruited both deaf and hearing signers, all of whom grew up signing with deaf parents.

Each person sat in front of a monitor with a video camera pointed at them. They were shown sets of pictures and were asked to sign the name of each item. In another session, they were shown those words in English and asked to translate them into British Sign Language.

“We noticed that there were quite a few cases where the hands and the mouth seemed to be doing something different,” said Vinson. They found participants making mistakes—signing and mouthing ‘banana’ when the picture was an apple, for example. But when they were translating English words, the hands made the same kind of mistakes, but the lips didn’t. This suggests that the lip movement isn’t part of the sign.

This means that in essence, they were reading out English words and pronouncing them out loud at the same time – like processing two languages at the same time.

This study appears in Psychological Science , a journal of the Association for Psychological Science…….Source

The Future Will Be Captioned: Improving Accessibility on YouTube

Tens of millions of people in the U.S. experience some kind of hearing impairment and recent studies  have predicted that over 700 million people worldwide will suffer from hearing impairment by 2015. To address a clear need, the broadcast industry began running captions on regular video programming in the early 1970s. Today, closed captions on video are more prevalent than ever. But generating captions today can be a time-consuming and complicated process….Read more

One woman lifts the lid on on the tragic genetic consequences of when first cousins marry

Sitting in the family living room, I watched tensely as my mother and her older brother signed furiously at each other. Although almost completely without sound, their row was high-octane, even vicious.

Three of my uncles were born deaf but they knew how to make themselves heard. Eventually, my uncle caved in and fondly put his arm around his sister. My mum has always had a special place in her family because she was the first girl to live beyond childhood. Five of her sisters died as babies or toddlers. It was not until many years later that anyone worked out why so many children died and three boys were born deaf.

Today there is no doubt among us that this tragedy occurred because my grandparents were first cousins.….Read more

Deaf in London: time to sit up and listen?

We all know the exasperation and discomfort felt when abroad where no English is spoken but imagine not being able to communicate effectively in your hometown when going about your daily business? Imagine not getting the hair cut you want or being able to explain to your dentist or GP exactly what pain it is you feel and, in turn, them not being to explain to you what they are going to do about it?

This is everyday life for deaf people….Read more

Deaf activists oppose California bill that would develop brochure for parents

It’s strong language to accuse a state assemblyman of pushing a “eugenics” bill that could threaten deaf people. But in an emotionally charged fight, California deaf activists have invoked the word as they battle a bill that could pass the state Legislature within a week.

Tony Mendoza, a Democrat from Artesia, near Los Angeles, said he has been surprised at how vehement deaf opposition is to his Assembly Bill 2072. The proposal’s intent, he said, is to create a 13-person panel to develop an informational brochure to be given to every deaf newborn’s parents.

Right now, Mendoza said, the distribution of information is “very haphazard.” Parents have complained to him, he said, that they were not briefed on various options to try to help their child develop speech during the critical years up to age 5.

The brochure would explain a range of options, Mendoza said, including “cochlear implants,” high-tech devices surgically implanted and also worn outside the ear that allow the brain, with training, to hear degrees of sound.

Mendoza said that he realizes that his bill has touched a raw nerve within the deaf culture – a community that rejects deafness as a defect, and embraces American Sign Language as a full language best learned starting at infancy. “There is no cure for deafness. Accept that, please,” said Sheri Farinha, chief executive officer of NorCal Services for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing….Read more

Deaf Law  – Mendoza Eugenics Bill Creates Legal and Ethical Issues

California bill AB 2072, sponsored by Assemblymember Tony Mendoza will be on the Senate floor for a vote this week with amendments which will create legal and ethical issues. The Deaf community which uses American Sign Language believes that this bill is bad public policy designed to enrich special interests who have reported record profits and will jeopardize the human rights of Deaf children to use American Sign Language.

If the bill becomes law, it will put special interests such as audiologists, physicians, and those who promote the auditory/oral education methods in a position which they have the majority of influence over the contents of brochures which will be provided to parents of Deaf children by an audiologist and again by an Early Start provider….Read More

Deaf Justice – Deaf woman wins big payout

A hearing-impaired Geelong woman, whose right hand was crushed and burned in a horrific workplace accident, has won a six-figure compensation payout. The injury, in October 2006 at leather finishing firm AusTanners at Lara, was compounded for Darlene Harmer because she used her right hand to communicate with sign language.

Mrs Harmer, 49, suffered seven broken bones in her hand, third degree burns and a split in the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. She underwent eight operations on her hand, and has been left with restricted movement of her right hand and fingers, together with severe scarring…Read More

Police pay out £1.2m for interpreters in three years

Senior officers said speakers of about 50 languages have been called upon at “huge expense” to communicate with foreign suspects, witnesses and victims. The annual cost of providing translators has risen from more than £370,000 in the year 2007 -08 to nearly £430,000 last year. Officers said the increase could be partly explained by a rise in the number of eastern European people living in Leicestershire in recent years.

In the past two years, Polish translators have been second only to Gujarati as the most often called upon by Leicestershire officers. They were followed, in order, by Punjabi, Romanian and Lithuanian. Supt Steve Harrod, head of Leicestershire Constabulary’s criminal justice department, said it was a huge but necessary expense.

He said: “Clearly, it would be completely unfair if we were bringing in people and speaking to them in English and expecting them to come up with explanations for their actions without being able to understand us. “It’s absolutely right that suspects have the same access to their rights as someone who is English-speaking. “The budget for interpreters is not just used for interviewing suspects.

“It may also be used for foreign nationals who have witnessed an offence, or for when officers need to go to a foreign country where these people live in order to speak to them. “It’s a huge expense – it’s an awful lot of money I would rather we didn’t have to spend. “But it’s not just a Leicestershire problem, it’s a national problem.” Read More

I was once Super Pro ASL and Deaf Culture

I remember when I first started taking ASL courses over 6 years ago. I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED it! Sign language is such a cool language to learn. There are so many things you can do with sign language that you can never do with spoken language. I wanted to tell everyone and I wanted everyone to learn sign language.

I also started learning about the concept of Deaf Culture. I was truly fascinated by this idea and never really thought that people would view being deaf as more of a “difference” as oppose to a “disability.” I started really thinking about deafness, how I view it, how others view it, how I dealt with it up until then.

To be honest, I never really thought about my not hearing too well and wearing hearing aids ever since I was two. I never thought about being hard of hearing. It was not anything that people teased me about or made a big deal about. When my mother found out that I had a hearing loss, she was fine with it and did what she had to do to help me. She got me hearing aids and tried to help me advocate for myself in letting others know so they can better accommodate me in certain situations. I was not a shy kid, I did extremely well in school and got along fine with others. I was never embarrassed about my hearing loss or my hearing aids. It was not a big deal to me at the time. There were no concerns or discussions about my hearing loss. My family just let me be…. Read the rest of the Article

New method to transmit sign language via cell phone

Researchers at the University of Washington have begun testing new technology that allows for American Sign Language to be transmitted over U.S. cellular networks, taking advantage of the video conferencing features now available on many mobile phones. “This is the first study of how deaf people in the United States use mobile video phones,” said Eve Riskin, a UW professor of electrical engineering, who is leading the project.

Here’s more from the UW press release:

The MobileASL team has been working to optimize compressed video signals for sign language. By increasing image quality around the face and hands, researchers have brought the data rate down to 30 kilobytes per second while still delivering intelligible sign language. MobileASL also uses motion detection to identify whether a person is signing or not in order to extend the phones’ battery life during video use. Transmitting sign language as efficiently as possible increases affordability, improves reliability on slower networks and extends battery life, even on devices that might have the capacity to deliver higher quality video….Source