This paper discusses disadvantaging situations that deaf students encounter in higher education in Sweden. We report two recent cases of deaf students' academic welfare being put at risk. We foreground in these cases the 'odd situations' that arise when provisions that fail to access the particular nature of deaf experience also fail to secure…

Upon arrival in Sweden, adult migrants are required to learn Swedish at the earliest opportunity. This requirement also extends to deaf migrants, regardless of their linguistic and educational backgrounds. This paper presents findings and experiences derived from a project focused on the multilingual situation of deaf migrants in Sweden. Some deaf…

Disabled people encounter numerous barriers to accessibility and face discrimination and inequalities in their daily lives. The situation is even more complex for migrants with a disability, who have to learn how to navigate a new bureaucratic system. This study focuses on deaf adult migrants and the linguistic and bureaucratic challenges they…

There is a lack of tests available for assessing sign language proficiency among L2 learners. We have therefore developed a sign repetition test, SignRepL2, with a specific focus on the phonological features of signs. This paper describes the two phases of developing this test. In the first phase, content was developed in the form of 50 items with…

This article gives a presentation of the Swedish Language act and its application and reception by the public. Ten years have passed since its introduction, and for this reason a study was conducted by the Swedish Language council about what kind of issues were brought to governmental and local authorities by the public. By the collection of…

This study presents a corpus-based investigation of self-repairs in hearing adult L2 (M2L2, second modality and second language) learners of Swedish Sign Language ("Svenskt teckenspråk," STS). This study analyses M2L2 learners' STS conversations with a deaf signer and examines the learners' self-repair practices and whether there are…

In recent decades, a growing body of scholarship has recognised the inappropriateness of conceptualising and representing communicative practices in terms of essentialized codes where different named language-varieties and modalities mutually exclude one another. At the same time, making visible complex practices has resulted in methodologies and…

This article describes the lexical and syntactic development of written narratives in 24 deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students aged between 8 and 18 and takes into account how their varying linguistic backgrounds may predict their written performance. All participants use spoken Swedish, but the study also considers their proficiency in Swedish…

This article details the transcription process we developed to handle bimodal and multilingual interview data collected during our research into the teacher language awareness (TLA) of two high-quality teachers in a Swedish bilingual school for the deaf. Both teachers used a combination of spoken Swedish, spoken English, and Teckenspråk (Sweden's…

Studies on hard of hearing (HH) individuals have focused mostly on children's experiences in school. However, their lives as young adults have not received much attention. The present study therefore examined HH young adults' experiences of social identity and group membership. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 16 individuals (10…

Since the late 1990s, the majority of D/deaf students enter schooling in a mainstream setting. Little has been written about their experiences and how a change in school settings impacts their learning and social identity. In this study, semi-structured interviews have been conducted with nine students, and the results show that their time in a…

Strengthening the connections between sign language and written language may improve reading skills in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) signing children. The main aim of the present study was to investigate whether computerized sign language-based literacy training improves reading skills in DHH signing children who are learning to read. Further,…

Although once placed solely in deaf schools, a growing number of deaf students in Sweden are now enrolling in mainstream schools. In order to maintain a functional educational environment for these students, municipalities are required to provide a variety of supporting resources, e.g. technological equipment and specialized personnel. However,…

This study, which is part of a larger longitudinal ethnographic study of young deaf children, reports on deaf children's use of fingerspelling. The children observed were early signers using Swedish Sign Language (SSL) in communication with teachers and peers. This study centres on the functions of fingerspelling in the children's everyday…

The literacy skills of deaf children generally lag behind those of their hearing peers. The mechanisms of reading in deaf individuals are only just beginning to be unraveled but it seems that native language skills play an important role. In this study 12 deaf pupils (six in grades 1-2 and six in grades 4-6) at a Swedish state primary school for…