Has the Technological World Been Blind to the Deaf?

I found this article sort of by accident.  I have always had a interest in language, especially the more...nontraditional, e.g. Sign Language, but until I am deaf or blind, I don't think I will ever truly understand what it is like to need a different form of communication.  Over the past few years, I have really started developing a passion for Web Development, and I try to consider how to optimize websites for the blind community when I build them.  I grew up with a neighbor who slowly became blind as he aged, though in her early nineties decided she wanted to learn how to use a computer and send emails.  I remember the frustration she encountered trying to use programs like Jaws to read entire webpages to her.

What never crossed my mind, however, is how the internet and the world of computers is used by the deaf community.  Because a deaf person can see just fine, it never occurred to me that they would not be able to use the internet in at least close to the same way as I can.  It turns out though, deaf people tend to have a very difficult time learning to read and write.  Before I really delved into the contents of the article above, I did a little research about how true this statement was.  I found that, according to VOA News, "on average, deaf high school seniors are likely to read at the level of a nine-year-old."  This was beyond shocking to me.  I had never even considered how difficult it could be for deaf people to learn about a verbal and written language they can't even use in the "normal" way.

The article goes on to state that deaf people "can face the same problems as other bilingual people."  I thought about this for a minute.  Yes, I think I have always considered American Sign Language to be a separate language all-together from English, because, after all, it is not like a deaf person is relating the sign for an object to the word for that object.  They are relating the sign for the object to the physical object in the same way I relate the word for the object to the physical object.  The article continues that signers "brains have to choose between two languages all the time."  This, however, was news to me.  I had never really considered the languages that separate.

After all of the research I did, I returned to the original article.  A team of researchers in Germany are trying to develop an avatar that will sign to deaf people on the internet.  Because reading can be difficult for many people in the deaf community, why not present the information on the internet, and even around a city, in a way that is easier for them to relate to?  The Saarbrücken team proposes in its paper, Assessing the Deaf User Perspective on Sign Language Avatars, the use of avatars instead of video recordings because recordings "imply considerable production cost, their content cannot be modified after production, and they cannot be anonymized with the face being a meaningful component of sign language."

As a lover of 3D modeling and animation, this all makes complete sense to me and I am very excited about the project.  I hope that it can not only be used as a means for the deaf community to feel more included in the technological world, but for the hearing community to learn more about the deaf community.