Deaf culture is the set of social beliefs, behaviors, art, literary traditions, history, values, and shared institutions of communities that are influenced by deafness and which use sign languages as the main means of communication. When used as a cultural label, especially within the culture, the word deaf is often written with a capital D and referred to as "big D Deaf" in speech and sign. When used as a label for the audiological condition, it is written with a lower case d. Carl G. Croneberg was among the first to discuss analogies between Deaf and hearing cultures in his appendices C and D of the 1965 Dictionary of American Sign Language.
Interpreting is a translational activity in which one produces a first and final target-language output on the basis of a one-time exposure to an expression in a source language.
New Zealand Sign Language or NZSL is the main language of the deaf community in New Zealand. It became an official language of New Zealand in April 2006 under the New Zealand Sign Language Act 2006. The purpose of the act was to create rights and obligations in the use of NZSL throughout the legal system and to ensure that the Deaf community had the same access to government information and services as everybody else. According to the 2013 Census, over 20,000 New Zealanders know NZSL.
Gary Malkowski is a former Canadian provincial politician. He represented the riding of York East in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1990 to 1995, as a member of the Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP). He was Canada's first deaf parliamentarian, and the first deaf parliamentarian in the world to address a legislature in a sign language, specifically American Sign Language. He was formerly a table tennis player who went onto represent Canada at the Deaflympics in 1977 and 1985.
Deaf President Now (DPN) was a student protest in March 1988 at Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C. The protest began on March 6, 1988, when the Board of Trustees announced its decision to appoint a hearing candidate, Elizabeth Zinser, over the other Deaf candidates, Irving King Jordan and Harvey Corson, as its seventh president.
Japanese Sign Language, also known by the acronym JSL, is the dominant sign language in Japan and is a complete natural language, distinct from but influenced by the spoken Japanese language.
The history of deaf people and deaf culture make up deaf history. The Deaf culture is a culture that is centered on sign language and relationships among one another. Unlike other cultures the Deaf culture is not associated with any native land as it is a global culture. While deafness is often included within the umbrella of disability, many view the Deaf community as a language minority. Throughout the years many accomplishments have been achieved by deaf people. To name the most famous, Ludwig van Beethoven and Thomas Alva Edison were both deaf and contributed great works to culture.
The World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) is an international non-governmental organization that acts as a peak body for national associations of Deaf people, with a focus on deaf people who use sign language and their family and friends. WFD aims to promote the human rights of deaf people worldwide, by working closely with the United Nations and various UN agencies such as the International Labour Organization and the World Health Organization. WFD is also a member of the International Disability Alliance (IDA).
The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) is an organization for the promotion of the rights of deaf people in the United States. NAD was founded in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1880 as a non-profit organization run by Deaf people to advocate for deaf rights, its first president being Robert P. McGregor of Ohio. It includes associations from all 50 states and Washington, DC, and is the US member of the World Federation of the Deaf, which has over 120 national associations of Deaf people as members. It has its headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland.
A video relay service (VRS), also sometimes known as a video interpreting service (VIS), is a video telecommunication service that allows deaf, hard-of-hearing, and speech-impaired (D-HOH-SI) individuals to communicate over video telephones and similar technologies with hearing people in real-time, via a sign language interpreter.
The Philippine Federation of the Deaf, Inc. (PFD) is a non-stock, non-profit organization which caters to the general needs of deaf people in the Philippines.
The Japanese Federation of the Deaf (JFD) is the national organization of the Deaf in Japan. JFD is also a member organization of the World Federation of the Deaf.
Braam Jordaan is a South African entrepreneur, filmmaker, animator, and activist. He is an advocate for Sign Language and human rights of Deaf people, and a board member of the World Federation of the Deaf Youth Section. In 2009, Jordaan collaborated with the Canadian Cultural Society of the Deaf and Marblemedia on the first children's animated dictionary of American Sign Language, which allows deaf children to look up words in their own primary language of ASL along with the English counterpart. The dictionary allows both deaf children and their hearing parents to learn sign language together.
HASA is a social benefit 501(c)(3) organization located in Baltimore, Maryland, that specializes in facilitating communication. Established in 1926, the organization provides special education services through Gateway School, audiology and speech-language services through its Clinical Services Department, and interpreting services for the deaf through its CIRS Interpreting Department.
There are about 357,000 deaf and 3,210,000 hard-of-hearing people in Canada. The country can be split into Francophone and Anglophone regions, and has both French and English as official languages. The majority of Canada is considered Anglophone, while the province of Quebec along with small parts of New Brunswick, Ontario, and Manitoba are primarily French-speaking. The presence of these two main languages and cultures also brings forth different deaf cultures between the two regions. In Francophone regions, the official language used by deaf and hard-of-hearing people is Quebec Sign Language.
Japanese Sign Language (JSL), also known as Nihon Shuwa, is the unofficial but most predominantly used sign language used by nearly 57,000 native signers as their primary language. It is a convergent, Deaf community sign language developed in the late 19th century.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has a population of about 1.4 million deaf people out of a total population of about 86.7 million. The World Health Organization (WHO) claims that countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are one of the more greatly affected regions by hard-of-hearing complications, compared to the rest of the world. Deaf people in the DRC are subject to neglect and discrimination by their families and the government, but they are also met with small, various ways of support and charity through international, European, Australian, and American religious, non-religious, and governmental organizations.
The Canadian Association of the Deaf estimates that there are over 350,000 Deaf Canadians, but there is not an exact number since there has never been a formal census on Deaf Canadians. There are approximately 1.2 million Indigenous people and over 750 reserves in Canada. There are various intersections of deaf and Indigenous culture, including valuing community, rooting their identity in their culture and its associated group instead of their individuality, having their identities oversimplified, being underrepresented in research and data collection, and experiencing health inequities due to their identities. There is limited research on Deaf Indigenous people, but the Saskatchewan Human Rights Association argues that issues faced by Deaf people are exacerbated when that person is also Indigenous.
South Korea's Deaf population began to come to prominence in recorded history in the late 19th century with the implementation of special education. Since then, they have gained government recognition and legal rights.
The Filipino Sign Language (FSL) is the official language of education for deaf Filipinos, which number around 121,000 as of 2000.
