BACKGROUND Deafness is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. The different ways of perceiving and understanding deafness have practical implications for research with deaf people. Whilst the deaf community is not homogenous, it is generally distinct from the hearing population. Consequently, the appropriateness of applying research methods and informed concern processes designed for the hearin...

Sign languages appear to be the major communication tool for the deaf community. As a minor community, Vietnamese deaf people often have to rely on a small numbers of interpreters who are hearing people knowing sign language in order to communicate with hearing people. It would be very beneficial for deaf as well as hearing people to develop an automated translation system between spoken/writte...

This paper explores the effect of substituting textual links for graphical ones on the performance of deaf signers in Hypertext Information Retrieval (HIR). Both deaf and hearing users found more targets, were faster and became less disoriented in the Verbal hypertext interface than in the Graphical one. Deaf users were outperformed by hearing users in all conditions except in short paths with ...

The study of voice-hallucinations in deaf individuals, who exploit the visuomotor rather than auditory modality for communication, provides rare insight into the relationship between sensory experience and how "voices" are perceived. Relatively little is known about the perceptual characteristics of voice-hallucinations in congenitally deaf people who use lip-reading or sign language as their p...

BACKGROUND Many cultural and linguistic Deaf people in South Africa face disparity when accessing health information because of social and language barriers. The number of certified South African Sign Language interpreters (SASLIs) is also insufficient to meet the demand of the Deaf population in the country. Our research team, in collaboration with the Deaf communities in Cape Town, devised a ...

A challenge facing Black Ethnic Minority (BME) deaf people is the lack of cultural sensitivity or understanding towards their heritage and their Deaf identity. This raises several issues and demonstrates that groups do not really fully understand the profile of a BME deaf person and their background. This leads to many services being unable to fully accommodate the needs of BME deaf people. Thi...

To provide accurate diagnostic screening of deaf people who use signed communication, cognitive tests must be devised in signed languages with normative deaf samples. This article describes the development of the first screening test for the detection of cognitive impairment and dementia in deaf signers. The British Sign Language Cognitive Screening Test uses standardized video administration t...