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Community-Driven Information Accessibility: Online Sign Language Content Creation within d/Deaf Communities

Xinru Tang, University of California-Irvine, USA

Xiang Chang, Sichuan University, China

Nuoran Chen, University of California-Berkeley, USA

Yingjie (MaoMao) Ni, Sign Access (Guangzhou) Service Co., Ltd, China

RAY LC, City University of Hong Kong, China

Xin Tong*, Duke Kunshan University, China

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70 million d/Deaf people around the world face a lack of sign language information

~ 8% d/Deaf people in China can effectively understand sign language interpretations in official TV news

[Liu et al., Applied Linguistics 2013, originally in Chinese]

[Rodríguez-Martín et al., Contemporary nurse, 2013]

[Silva et al., Journal of Science Communication, 2020]

d/Deaf People and Sign Langauges

* We detailed the reason in our paper.

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Machine-driven solutions meet difficulties in

Sign Language Technologies

[Kacorri et al., ASSETS 2015]

[Yin et al., ACL 2021]

[Bragg et al., ASSETS 2019]

Datasets

Recognition & Computer Vision

Modeling & Natural Language Processing

Avatars & Computer Graphics

UI/UX Design

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d/Deaf people share a strong collective culture &

a long tradition in creating information access for themselves

[Padden and Humphries, 2009][Valentine and Skelton, 2009]

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Can we support d/Deaf communities in growing sign language content for themselves?

What is the current situation of sign language content created by d/Deaf communities?

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Phase 1

semi-structured interviews

Phase 2

content analysis of d/Deaf videos

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Phase 1

Semi-structured interviews with 12 d/Deaf people from 5 different areas in China, including a content creator

d/Deaf videos:

sign language videos created by and for d/Deaf people

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Community-Driven Information Accessibility: Opportunities & Challenges

sex education

COVID-19

legal terms

All d/Deaf people in (annonymized city) complain they cannot understand sign language interpretations in TV news. The interpreters are invited by hearing people who do not understand CSL…. (P1)

…

Through interviews, we found that d/Deaf videos served as important information source and educational materials for d/Deaf people. As one older d/Deaf adult told us, d/Deaf people in his city often find it hard to understand the sign language interpretation in TV news. As a result, d/Deaf videos have gained popularity among d/Deaf people because they have compensated for the lack of official sign language information.

We found that the videos have served many roles in our participants’ life. One participant told us he knew the outbreak of COVID-19 first through d/Deaf videos behind TV news. A d/Deaf student followed the video channel from a d/Deaf lawyer to learn legal terms in sign language because he wants to be a lawyer for d/Deaf people across China. A d/Deaf-led organization was working together to promote sex education in sign language..and more examples in our paper

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Phase 2

content analysis of 360 d/Deaf videos from 12 video channels recommended by our participants and a Deaf professional in our team

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Please check our paper if you are interested in more details!

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d/Deaf-led

Teams

Individual d/Deaf

Creators

Hearing Viewers

d/Deaf Viewers

Create Content

Consult Together

Create Content

Collaboratively

Ecosystem of d/Deaf Video Creation and Sharing

Challenges

Content Categories

Receive Information

Potentially View d/Deaf Videos and React to the Videos

Receive Information

Engage with the Videos and Creators

News

General Knowledge

Life Tips

…

Language Diversity

Unforeseeable Words in CSL

Suggest Content

Provide Feedback

Show Support

…

Video Platforms

(enabling sign language content creation and sharing)

Traditional Media:

Newspapers, TVs, …

(lacking sign language content)

Discussion Space

Trolls and (Micro)aggression

Inconsistent Content Quality

Combining results from both interviews and content analysis, we finally outlined the whole eco-system of d/Deaf video creation and sharing in the paper, which clearly shows the potential of community-driven approaches for supporting d/Deaf people’s information needs.

Here we will provide a quick overview of the eco-system.

Many d/Deaf people, including both individuals and teams, are creating sign language videos on video platforms because traditional media lacks sign language information.

These user-generated videos have covered a wide range of information that d/Deaf people may need or be interested in, as we introduced.

However, community-based sign language content creation may also face a series of challenges, especially difficulties in translation caused by language diversity and unforeseeable words in Chinese Sign Language. Therefore, d/Deaf content creators may consult translations together in online discussion space.

Another challenge faced by community-genreated content is the inconsistent content quality. Some of our participants were unsatisfied with d/Deaf videos because they thought the videos were lack in depth or not good in translation quality.�

We also found that d/Deaf content creators may have negative experience because of online trolls and microaggression, which may come from hearing viewers.

Besides the content production side, we also found that d/Deaf viewers actively engaged with the eco-system by suggesting content, providing feedback, and showing support. These feedback also plays important roles in the eco-system to help to improve the quality of d/Deaf videos.

We provide future research directions and design opportunities in the paper.

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Thank you!

We thank all the people who supported this study!