The Concept of Examining the Experiences of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Online Users

AbstractDespite the widespread popularity of social networking sites (SNSs) among the deaf and hard of hearing (D/HH), relatively little has been published about how to examine their experiences on SNSs in terms of creating online communities to support non-formal education, such as e-learning. With this regard, this paper sets forth a new approach and proposes a theoretical model for examining the experiences of D/HH users of SNSs from the aspects of identity, community building and alliances between communities. Factors, such as hearing loss, educational background, the communication situation and the use of technology are all considered with regard to their meaning for communication at SNSs. The main aim of the model is to examine experiences in informal online spaces and provide a set of guidelines for efficient social and communication support for D/HH online users at non-formal educational process which will in particular serve teachers, designers and developers included in the process. We also point to further research in order to implement the model in the field as well

Building Interaction with an Isolated Population through Social Media: The Deaf Community

The purpose of the study is to discover the effects of social media on the deaf community. Ten individuals, aged from 21 to 29, participated in this study. There was no control for race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. An Internet survey was used to gather data. Results suggest that hearing impaired individuals do use social media and that the ways in which is it used varies as a function of degree of hearing loss

Social Isolation, Fear of Missing Out, and Social Media Use in Deaf and Hearing College Students

This study investigated the relationships between social isolation, fear of missing out, self-esteem, and social media usage, and whether these relationships are different in deaf and hearing college students. Data were collected from 191 individuals (46 Deaf/Hard of Hearing, 145 hearing) via an online survey. Variables included number of social media accounts, time spent (in hours) on social media, number of times per day social media is accessed, FOMO, social media use, hearing status/identity, self-esteem, social isolation, and social media disorder. Correlational tests were conducted separately for hearing and for Deaf/HH participants. The groups had an unequal distribution of gender, which was evaluated via chi-square tests and determined to be statistically significant. A two-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to investigate whether the gender or hearing identity of participants influenced the results. Gender was not significant in the distribution, but hearing identity was significant. With the exception of the number of social media accounts, the hearing identity groups did not differ on social media use. However, the DHH participants scored higher on the social media disorder scale and lower in self-esteem. Neither scale was normed for the DHH community, so these findings should be interpreted with caution. There was not a relationship between social media use and FOMO in Deaf/HH participants but a relationship between FOMO and number of accounts and hours per day was seen in the hearing group. Overall, the quantity of social media use was not correlated with social isolation, self-esteem, or FOMO, with two exceptions (number of accounts and hours per day in hearing). There was a relationship between social media use and social media disorder, which was expected. These results indicated that how individuals interact with social media might be more meaningful to examine than how frequently they use it

Macho, mobile and resilient? How workers with impairments are doubly disabled in project-based film and television work

© 2016. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 (CC BY-NC 3.0) licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ Keith Randle is Professor of Work and Organisation at the Hertfordshire Business School, UK. He has a particular interest in exclusion and inequalities in the creative and cultural industries internationally and has published widely on work and employment in the film and television industries. In 2013 he co-established the interdisciplinary Creative Economy Research Centre (CERC) at the University of Hertfordshire with the aim of bringing together research interests in Business, Humanities and the Creative Arts. Dr Kate Hardy is a Lecturer in Work and Employment Relations at the University of Leeds. Her research interests include paid and unpaid work; gender; agency; the sex industry; materialist feminism; collective organising; political economy; the body; disability and theorising work and employment. Her work has been widely published academically and disseminated through radio and news media. She has co-authored a monograph with Teela Sanders, entitled ‘Flexible Workers: labour, regulation and the political economy of stripping industry’. Kate is committed to developing methodologies which work alongside research participants, in order to undertake socially and politically transformative research.Inequalities in the creative industries are known to be persistent and systemic. The model of production in UK film and television (UKF&TV) is argued to exclude on the basis of gender, race and class. This article considers a social category that has been overlooked in these debates: disability. It argues that workers with impairments are ‘doubly disabled’ – in both the labour markets and labour processes of UKF&TV. It concludes that disability cannot simply be incorporated in an additive way in order to understand the exclusion of these workers, but that they face qualitatively different sources of disadvantage compared with other minorities in UKF&TV workplaces. This has negative implications for workers with impairments in other labour markets, as project and network-based freelance work, a contributor to disadvantage, is seen as both increasingly normative and paradigmatic.Peer reviewe

Future bathroom: A study of user-centred design principles affecting usability, safety and satisfaction in bathrooms for people living with disabilities

Research and development work relating to assistive technology 2010-11 (Department of Health) Presented to Parliament pursuant to Section 22 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 197

Developing a Prototype to Translate Pakistan Sign Language into Text and Speech While Using Convolutional Neural Networking

The purpose of the study is to provide a literature review of the work done on sign language in Pakistan and the world. This study also provides a framework of an already developed prototype to translate Pakistani sign language into speech and text while using convolutional neural networking (CNN) to facilitate unimpaired teachers to bridge the communication gap among the deaf learners and unimpaired teachers. Due to the lack of sign language teaching, unimpaired teachers face difficulty in communicating with impaired learners. This communication gap can be filled with the help of this translation tool. Research indicates that a prototype has been evolved that can translate the English textual content into sign language and highlighted that there is a need for translation tool which can translate the signs into English text. The current study will provide an architectural framework of the Pakistani sign language to English text translation tool that how different components of technology like deep learning, convolutional neural networking, python, tensor Flow, and NumPy, InceptionV3 and transfer learning, eSpeak text to speech help in the development of a translation tool prototype. Keywords: Pakistan sign language (PSL), sign language (SL), translation, deaf, unimpaired, convolutional neural networking (CNN). DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-15-18 Publication date:May 31st 201

Developing Interpersonal Relationships Between Deaf and Hearing People Using Instagram

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to understand how deaf and hard of hearing individuals use Instagram to interact with and develop interpersonal relationships with hearing individuals. The researcher used her personal experience as a member of the deaf and hard of hearing community to connect with members of the researched population on a personal level. The theories guiding this study were Elihu Katz’s uses and gratifications theory, Joseph B. Walther’s social information processing theory (SIPT), and Sandra Ball-Rokeach and Melvin DeFleur’s media dependency theory. These theories were applied to help the researcher gain a better understanding of the motives for why deaf and hard of hearing individuals choose to use or not use Instagram as a communication tool and to consider whether Instagram nurtures or hinders their interpersonal relationships with the hearing world. After analyzing the qualitative data, the researcher also included new medium theory as a lens to explain how participants shared common interests and supplemented FtF communication. 16 open-ended ethnographical interviews lasting no more than 1 hour each were conducted over Zoom. Interviews were recorded from those participants who gave consent and then hand-coded using textual and structural descriptions. Participants were also required to provide the researcher with .html downloads of their Instagram data where their comments and messages were read, coded, and analyzed. Data were collected from the interviews and the Instagram data files to allow the researcher to interpret and report on participants’ experiences with Instagram in a way that was as thorough and accurate as possible. The findings of this research study showed that Instagram did not have a significant impact on the interpersonal relationships between deaf and hard of hearing individuals and the hearing world. Deaf and hard of hearing individuals prefer to use Instagram to engage with the hearing loss community, educate themselves and others about their hearing loss, and advocate for their needs as deaf and hard of hearing individuals

What Counselors Say About Their Role with Deaf Students: A Qualitative Study

This article reports the qualitative findings of a larger study which examined the role of public school counselors serving deaf students. The American School Counseling Association (ASCA) has a model that prescribes a specific role for school counselors. However, the 6 participants revealed experiences that were different from the ASCA model. Five themes were identified from the interviews. Themes were experience as authority, Director of Negotiations/Collaborations, isolation, surrogate parent/social confidante, and martyr. Implications for practice and research are provided for practitioners, researchers, and counselor educators