Public Release:  Crowdsourcing site compiles new sign language for math and science

University of Washington


IMAGE: This is an ASL-STEM Forum screen shot, with former research team member Anna Cavender. view more

Credit: University of Washington

A multimedia feature published this week in the New York Times, "Pushing Science's Limits in Sign Language Lexicon," outlines efforts in the United States and Europe to develop sign language versions of specialized terms used in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The article shares newly defined signs for terms like "light-year," "organism" and "photosynthesis." It also describes a successful crowdsourcing effort started at the University of Washington in 2008 that lets members of the deaf and hard-of-hearing community build their own guide to the evolving lexicon of science.

"It's not a dictionary," explained Richard Ladner, a UW professor of computer science and engineering. "The goal of the forum is to be constantly changing, a reflection of the current use."


But a dictionary can't include the newest terms, Ladner said, and many graduate students won't find the specialized terms used in their chosen fields. For example, Ladner helped organize a 2008 workshop where a deaf scientist said only about one-quarter of his field's specialized terms existed in his native language, American Sign Language, or ASL. Many workshop participants reported that at some point they had had to work with their interpreters to develop their own code words.

That year, with funding from Google Corp. and the National Science Foundation, Ladner's group launched the ASL-STEM Forum, an online compilation of signs used in science, technology, engineering and math that is more like Wikipedia or the Urban Dictionary.

"The goal was to have one place where all these signs could be," Ladner said. "We're not trying to decide on new signs but just collect the ones that are in current use."

The site lists 6,755 terms from biology, chemistry, engineering, math and computer science textbooks. Of those, about 2,800 have video entries, some with multiple entries. Partnerships with the country's two largest higher education institutions for deaf and hard-of-hearing students have helped provide content.

Collaborators include Caroline Solomon, a UW alumna and biology professor at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., and Lang and Raja Kushalnagar at Rochester's National Technical Institute for the Deaf.

Visit the forum to see a sign for "bioengineering," "integral" and "peer-to-peer," none of which is listed in the Science Signs dictionary. Terms still seeking an ASL translation include "byte" and "eukaryote."

Anyone can visit the forum, but to add signs a user must create a free account then record a short video using a computer's camera that can be reviewed and uploaded. People also can rate and comment on signs uploaded by other users.







