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,

"Parent choice" requires informed parents, backed by support.

Tough news about a terminated grant

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,...