Focuses on the phonological deviance of the poetry of Dorothy Miles, who composed her work in both British Sign Language and English. Analysis is based on three poems performed by Miles herself. (Author/VWL)

There are not many elements of human life that have had as significant an impact on our development as literacy. Literacy has certainly been, and remains, a crucial issue especially in Deaf Education and in the Deaf World. The traditional definition of literacy has been exclusively understood as reading and writing. However, this article is…

This article is a response to "Blue Listerine, Parochialism, and ASL Literacy" (Czubek, 2006). The author presents his views on the concepts of literacy and the new and multiple literacies. In addition, the merits of print literacy and other types of literacies are discussed. Although the author agrees that there is an American Sign…

Samuel Johnson said it was the greatest human calamity, Helen Keller said she would rather be blind, and A.G. Bell feared that unless extraordinary measures were taken, a new and toxic variety of the human race would emerge. Deafness, the invisible disability, affects only one person in one thousand, but for as long as history has been recorded it…

A notable difference between signed and spoken languages is the use of nonmanual linguistic signals that co-occur with the production of signs. These nonmanual signals involve primarily the face and upper torso and are an important feature of American Sign Language (ASL). They include grammatical markers that indicate syntactic categories such as…

The rapid increase in demand for American Sign Language (ASL) instruction between 1998 and 2002 created pervasive challenges in effectively assessing and documenting ASL learner performance. To address these challenges, we designed and developed the "Avenue ASL" e-assessment environment: an integrated, network-based software system to capture,…

The New 7 Wonders of the World organization announced a shiny new list of the world's premier candidates. The people behind "Exceptional Parent" (EP) magazine were intrigued and inspired by the New 7 Wonders undertaking, and it started them thinking. If they had to name the 7 Wonders of the World of Disabilities, what or who would they…

This seminar proceedings document offers a summary of the views articulated in a paper by Robert E. Johnson and others titled "Unlocking the Curriculum: Principles for Achieving Access in Deaf Education." The paper's contention was that deaf students' low average academic achievement levels are not results of learning deficits inherently…

A survey indicated that out of 1,888 teachers of hearing-impaired students, 140 use American Sign Language (ASL) in their classrooms. Further investigation reduced this number to 25 who actually use ASL and 6 who probably do. (Author/CB)

A questionnaire survey assessing attitudes of 50 deaf adults toward sign language systems used in schools found the majority supported American Sign Language and Manually Coded English-Pidgin with some reservations. Respondents were also concerned about needs of individual deaf children and deaf adult involvement in educational decision making for…

This digest uses a question-and-answer format to summarize basic information about the use of English-based sign systems with children who are deaf or hard of hearing. English-based sign systems are explained as using the vocabulary of American Sign Language (ASL) with the grammatical and syntactical features of English. These systems include…

Describes the development of the Interactive Video Questionnaire for interviewing deaf persons. The questionnaire uses videodisc and bar-code readers to present survey questions on screen in American Sign Language, Signed English, speech reading, or as English subtitles. (DB)

A study involving three children who are deaf (grades 7-8) investigated the ways in which American Sign Language (ASL) and English-based sign allow for comprehension of text content. Retelling, proposition, and feature analysis scores indicate students understood the fable texts whether they were presented in ASL or English-based sign. (Contains…

The present paper summarizes three experiments that investigate the effects of age of acquisition on first-language (L1) acquisition in relation to second-language (L2) outcome. The experiments use the unique acquisition situations of childhood deafness and sign language. The key factors controlled across the studies are age of L1 acquisition, the…

This paper presents the results of research on information structure and word order in narrative sentences taken from signed short stories in Croatian Sign Language (HZJ). The basic word order in HZJ is SVO. Factors that result in other word orders include: reversible arguments, verb categories, locative constructions, contrastive focus, and prior…