acoustic trauma deafness

Imagine you’re sitting in a high school biology class or a college chemistry lab. The professor is giving a heated lecture using a whole host of long, difficult words. But every time she says “heterogeneous mixture” or “Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle” she spells out the entire term one letter at a time. That’s what life is like for deaf students and professionals in the sciences. But …

What is ASL or American Sign Language? American Sign Language, or ASL, is the visual signing language used by the Deaf community in the United States. English speakers in Canada and in a handful of other counties use ASL, too. Interestingly, those countries include the Philippines, Singapore, Jamaica, China, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cambodia, and Bolivia—a varied group. There are other sign languages …