Most sign-recognition tools learn by watching thousands of example videos. But labeled ASL video is scarce. A team tried something different: give the computer a map of how signs are actually built, the way a linguist understands them. It worked.

Sign language tech needs real signing videos, and gathering them is slow work. What if collecting data could be a game? Researchers built a signing version of Battleship to find out.

Signs are made of building blocks, the way spoken words are made of sounds. This study asked how best to teach a computer to spot those blocks. The answer was surprisingly human: start with the easy ones, then build up.

Most deaf children in the U.S. learn through a sign language interpreter in a mainstream classroom. A Deaf Center paper argues that an interpreter can give a child access, but it can't give a child language — and that difference matters.

How common is a sign? How is it built? Does it look like what it means? ASL-LEX answers those questions for thousands of ASL signs, in one free, searchable place. It started with about 1,000 signs and grew to 2,723, and it has quietly become a foundation for sign language research and technology.

A new paper in Pediatric Annals lays out what good care looks like for deaf and hard of hearing kids: put full language access first, connect families to early intervention and deaf mentors, and learn from deaf people and families. Sign language is a complete language, not a backup, and it does not hold back spoken language.

Most ASL tests only check words and grammar. But understanding a story means more — it means making sense of it. A Deaf Center team built the first test for that deeper kind of ASL comprehension, and learned something hopeful about late starters.

Sign language AI learns from video of real people signing. That data is personal, and the choices around it carry weight. A team of deaf and hearing experts maps the questions everyone building these tools should ask.

The science of reading as it applies to deaf and hard of hearing children.

When a deaf or hard-of-hearing child first arrives in a hearing family, caregivers are faced with decisions they probably never anticipated. One of the most pressing is which language(s) to use with their child, and how soon to introduce that language? For families who choose to learn ASL alongside their child, a new study offers evidence that their effort can make a real difference for their child, even before their own signing is fluent. Published in Developmental Science,

For decades, people believed that language was mostly arbitrary—words and signs with no direct connection to their meaning. But our new...

Imagine being able to look up an unfamiliar ASL sign by simply demonstrating it to your device. Whether you're a fluent signer or just beginning to learn, this type of interaction could transform accessibility in technology—think of ASL-compatible assistants like Siri or Alexa or search engines that understand signed queries. This vision is one step closer to reality thanks to the ASL Citizen dataset, a collaborative project we worked on with Microsoft Research, University of

A study published in The Journal of Special Education (2024) by Erin Finton, Wyatte C. Hall, Michele Berke, Ronald Bye, Stuart Ikeda,...

Our recent study, in the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development "Hearing parents as sign language learners" by Elana Pontecorvo, Julie Mitchiner, and Amy Lieberman explores whether hearing caregivers can successfully learn a sign language like ASL to communicate with their deaf or hard of hearing children. Spoiler: they absolutely can! Key Findings: Hearing caregivers who participated in the study were beginning and intermediate signing skills. Many parents dem

Research tells us that exposing deaf and hard of hearing children to ASL from an early age has a wide range of benefits, spanning language, social development, cognitive development, and school readiness. But how do hearing parents learn ASL? Our experience has been very positive. All have learned so much and felt so supported. My anxiety over communication barriers has decreased tremendously. Learning a new language can be a daunting task and one that takes a lot of time and

Understanding the Dynamics of Visual Attention in ASL Learning American Sign Language (ASL) is all about seeing and using signs to communicate. For deaf or hard-of-hearing children, learning ASL depends on knowing when to look at the person signing. But how do children learn this skill? In a recent study published in the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (2024), researchers Paris Gappmayr and Amy M. Lieberman explored how deaf and hard-of-hear

Tools for diagnosing autism are often not well suited to deaf children, which can make it challenging to diagnose. That is for two big reasons. The first is that the usual autism measures (e.g., the ADOS-2, ADI-R, and CARS2) focus on a child's use of spoken language. That makes them ill suited to measuring language skills in deaf and hard of hearing children who use sign language. The second reason these tools don't work will is that deaf kids are often at risk for language d

A dataset to train computers to recognize isolated signs.

Deaf children exposed to ASL before 6 months show age-appropriate vocabulary growth, matching peers with deaf parents.

Do signers organize their mental dictionary by how signs are formed, the way speakers organize theirs by sound? And does that change when language comes late? A look across a series of our studies.