Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
18 results found in Deaf Culture.
- American Sign Language (ASL, Ameslan)
- A complete, natural language that uses hand movements, facial expressions, and body posture to convey meaning, serving as the primary language of many Deaf people in the United States and parts of Can…
- Auslan (Australian Sign Language)
- Australian Sign Language, the sign language of the Australian Deaf community. Auslan is a natural language with its own grammar and lexicon, unrelated to English and distinct from American Sign Langua…
- Bicultural Identity (Biculturalism)
- An identity characterised by active participation in and identification with two distinct cultural communities — in the Deaf context, navigating both Deaf culture (sign-language based, with its own no…
- Bilingual-Bicultural Education (Bi-Bi Education, Bilingual Bicultural Education)
- Bilingual-bicultural (Bi-Bi) education is an approach to Deaf education in which children learn in both a natural sign language (e.g., ASL, BSL, LSF, LGP) as a first language and the surrounding writt…
- Deaf Music (Deaf musicality, Music in Deaf culture)
- Music as experienced, created, and culturally interpreted by d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals and communities. Deaf music encompasses a multimodal, spatio-temporal engagement with rhythm, vibrat…
- Gallaudet University
- A federally chartered private university in Washington, D.C., and the only university in the world designed specifically for deaf and hard of hearing students, with all programs and services tailored …
- Korean Sign Language (KSL, Suhwa)
- The primary sign language of the Deaf community in South Korea, with its own grammar, vocabulary, and regional variation, and legally recognized as an official language of Korea under the Korean Sign …
- Language Immersion
- An approach to language learning in which the learner is surrounded by and continuously exposed to the target language in natural, meaningful contexts rather than through isolated instruction. In the …
- Langue des Signes Québécoise (LSQ, Quebec Sign Language)
- The sign language used by the Deaf community in francophone Quebec and in francophone Deaf communities elsewhere in Canada. LSQ is a distinct natural language with its own grammar, lexicon, and cultur…
- Linguistic Minority (Language Minority)
- A group whose primary language differs from the dominant language of the surrounding society, often placing them at a disadvantage in education, employment, civic participation, and access to informat…
- Native Signer (Native Sign Language User, L1 Signer)
- A person who acquired a sign language as their first language (L1) during the critical period of language development, typically before age 5. Native signers usually learned sign language from deaf pa…
- Oralism (Oral Method, Oral Education)
- An educational philosophy and approach for deaf and hard of hearing individuals that emphasizes spoken language and lip-reading over the use of sign language. Historically, oralism dominated deaf educ…
- Prelingual Deafness (Prelingually Deaf, Congenital Deafness)
- Deafness present at birth or acquired before a child has developed spoken language, typically before around age three. Prelingually deaf individuals commonly learn a signed language as a first languag…
- Shared Visual Attention (Collective Visual Attention, Visual Joint Attention)
- A core feature of Deaf-centred interaction in which all participants coordinate their gaze, body orientation, and signing space so everyone can see the current signer, referenced content, and each oth…
- Signed Chinese (Manually Coded Chinese, Wenfa Shouyu)
- A manually coded signing system that imposes the grammar and word order of written/spoken Mandarin Chinese onto signs, analogous to Signed Exact English in anglophone contexts. Signed Chinese is commo…
- Song Signing (Signed Song, Sign-Singing, Song Sign)
- A performative art form in which song lyrics are interpreted in a sign language (most commonly ASL) alongside body movement, facial expression, rhythm, and spatial use, so that the performer simultane…
- Translated Deaf Self
- A concept coined by Alys Young, Jemina Napier, and Rosemary Oram describing how deaf signers' lifelong experiences of being encountered, represented, and inter-subjectively known by others occur in a …
- Visual Vernacular (VV)
- A deeply visual sign language performance art form rooted in visual storytelling, developed in the 1970s by deaf American actor Bernard Bragg and widely practiced internationally. Visual Vernacular co…