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The Student Body Is Deaf and Diverse. The School’s Leadership Is Neither.

More than 30 years after a groundbreaking protest at Gallaudet University in Washington, questions about leadership at a school for the deaf in Atlanta have been further compounded by race.

By Amanda Morris

Student protests over the hiring of a white hearing superintendent have roiled a school for the deaf that serves mostly Black and Hispanic students in the Atlanta area and have focused attention on whether school leaders should better reflect the identities of their students.

The Atlanta Area School for the Deaf, run by the Georgia Department of Education, is one of two public schools for the deaf in Georgia and serves roughly 180 students from kindergarten to 12th grade, about 80 percent of whom are Black and Hispanic.

Students protested the hiring, accusing the school and the Education Department of racism and disability-based discrimination against the deaf community known as audism. They noted that the school’s top leadership included no people of color or deaf people.

Two weeks later, the superintendent, Lisa Buckner, who has 22 years of experience as a teacher and administrator of deaf students and had most recently worked at the Education Department, resigned. The school has appointed an interim superintendent, who is also a white hearing woman, and is now searching for a permanent replacement.

Since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last summer, institutions across the country have grappled with questions of representation and leadership, often propelled by community protests. At the school in Atlanta, the demands echoed a 1988 student uprising at Gallaudet University, the federally chartered private school for the deaf and hard of hearing in Washington.

In that protest, which was viewed as a landmark moment for deaf people, students successfully pushed for the university’s first deaf president and drew attention to longstanding challenges faced by deaf people.

Activism since then, including a controversy that saw two board members at Gallaudet resign in 2020 while saying the school discriminated against Black deaf people in hiring and promotions, has increasingly evoked both race and disability. Three decades after the original Gallaudet protest, many in the deaf community say they are still fighting some of the same battles.

The protests in Atlanta followed the hiring of Ms. Buckner in September. She replaced the former superintendent, John Serrano, who resigned in May after four years working as the school’s first deaf Latino leader.

The Atlanta school said it interviewed every applicant who met minimum qualifications for the position. Meghan Frick, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Education, said it “stands opposed to audism and other forms of prejudice.” She described Ms. Buckner as “an educational leader” who was “proficient” in American Sign Language, or A.S.L.

But current and former staff members say deaf employees and people of color were overlooked for promotions, and both staff and students have complained that Ms. Buckner’s knowledge of A.S.L. was poor. In the original job posting, sign language fluency was listed as a preferred, not required, skill.

Many student protesters felt like the new superintendent could not understand them and looked down on them, according to Trinity Arreola, 18, a protest leader.

“It’s like we’re going backward,” Ms. Arreola, a senior and the president of the Latino Student Union, said. “It’s like we’re going back to a time where deaf people were thought of as limited and incapable.”

The school’s top leadership consists of white hearing women filling the roles of superintendent and assistant principal. In the 2020-21 school year, 79 percent of teachers were white and 60 percent of teachers were hearing, according to Education Department data. Ms. Buckner declined to answer questions about her decision to resign or complaints from students and staff.

Since May, at least 12 other employees have quit the school. Many of those who quit were deaf, people of color, or both, according to one former agriculture teacher, Emily Friedberg, 50, who is white and deaf.

After 12 years working at the school, she said, she was pushed to quit in June — months before she found out who the new superintendent was — because of what she described as a “hostile” environment driven by white hearing leadership that she said “bullied” deaf staff and made inappropriate remarks about students of color.

Ms. Frick said the Education Department was not aware of incidents like these at the school. She said officials encouraged anyone with concerns to reach out to the Education Department leadership.

Though the Gallaudet protest paved the way for new education and employment opportunities for the deaf, schools for the deaf are still mostly led by hearing people and are seldom led by people of color who are deaf.

Of the 73 school leadership positions for 71 statewide K-12 schools for the deaf across the country, 46 are held by hearing people, according to Tawny Holmes Hlibok, a professor of deaf studies at Gallaudet. Among the 27 deaf school leaders — a number that she said has more than doubled from seven years ago — three are people of color.

Growing research shows that students perform better in school if they have role models who reflect their background.

“I notice that when I talk to deaf children at a school without a deaf leader and ask them what they want to be when they grow up, they often limit themselves,” Professor Hlibok said, adding, “When I ask them if they want to be a teacher or lawyer or nurse, they say they can’t because that job is for a hearing person.”

A 2019 report by the National Deaf Center found that 44.8 percent of Black deaf people and 43.6 percent of deaf Native Americans are in the labor force, compared with 59 percent of white deaf people.

Along with a lack of role models, many deaf students, particularly deaf students of color, are not adequately prepared for college because of a lack of early language support services and a lack of certified educational interpreters in public schools, said Laurene E. Simms, interim chief bilingual officer at Gallaudet.

Black deaf students obtain undergraduate, master’s or Ph.D. degrees at about half the rate of Black hearing students, and half the rate of white deaf students, according to another 2019 report by the National Deaf Center .

The loss of so many people of color on the Atlanta school’s staff has made many students feel less comfortable there, according to Katrina Callaway, 19, a senior. In the past, she said, she and her friends have confided in teachers who they can relate to about their problems, home lives and friends, but now “students don’t feel like there’s anyone they can open up to,” she said.

“When I try to open up to someone who hasn’t had the same experiences,” she said, “I’m not always sure if I can trust them, and I feel a lot of self-doubt.” She said that sometimes it seemed that white staff treated students differently based on their skin color.

More broadly, activists in recent years have complained about the “whitewashing of disability,” or how much it is largely seen through a white lens, despite statistics that show Black people are more likely to have a disability .

For example, media portrayals of those with disabilities and leadership of disability organizations skew white, according to Vilissa Thompson, a Black disabled activist who created the hashtag #DisabilitySoWhite on Twitter to draw attention to the issue.

Recently, Netflix’s “Deaf U” reality series focusing on Gallaudet College students was criticized for its lack of deaf women of color, even though less than half of the school’s students were white at the time.

Those broader issues raised the stakes at places like the Atlanta school.

Ms. Frick said the Georgia Department of Education was working to create leadership pathways for teachers and school staff.

Mr. Serrano, the previous superintendent, declined to comment on his experience with the Education Department, but he wrote in an email that he hoped the department would conduct an equitable and inclusive search for the next superintendent.

“It is my firm belief that students want and need a leader who ‘looks like them’ and who shares their experiences as deaf and hard of hearing individuals,” he wrote.

Amanda Morris is a 2021-2022 disability reporting fellow for the National desk. More about Amanda Morris

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If online learning works for you, what about deaf students? Emerging challenges of online learning for deaf and hearing-impaired students during COVID-19: a literature review

Wajdi aljedaani.

1 University of North Texas, Denton, USA

Rrezarta Krasniqi

Sanaa aljedaani.

2 Cleveland State University, Cleveland, USA

Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer

3 Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, USA

Stephanie Ludi

Khaled al-raddah.

With the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, educational systems worldwide were abruptly affected and hampered, causing nearly total suspension of all in-person activities in schools, colleges, and universities. Government officials prohibited the physical gatherings in educational institutions to reduce the spread of the virus. Therefore, educational institutions have aggressively shifted to alternative learning methods and strategies such as online-based platforms—to seemingly avoid the disruption of education. However, the switch from the face-to-face setting to an entirely online setting introduced a series of challenges, especially for the deaf or hard-of-hearing students. Various recent studies have revealed the underlying infrastructure used by academic institutions may not be suitable for students with hearing impairments. The goal of this study is to perform a literature review of these studies and extract the pressing challenges that deaf and hard-of-hearing students have been facing since their transition to the online setting. We conducted a systematic literature review of 34 articles that were carefully collected, retrieved, and rigorously categorized from various scholarly databases. The articles, included in this study, focused primarily on highlighting high-demanding issues that deaf students experienced in higher education during the pandemic. This study contributes to the research literature by providing a detailed analysis of technological challenges hindering the learning experience of deaf students. Furthermore, the study extracts takeaways and proposed solutions, from the literature, for researchers, education specialists, and higher education authorities to adopt. This work calls for investigating broader and yet more effective teaching and learning strategies for deaf and hard-of-hearing students so that they can benefit from a better online learning experience.

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has largely affected the education sector, and in particular deaf education. According to Krishnan et al. [ 1 ], various measures to reduce the spread of the disease have led academic institutions to unprecedented changes to their academic activities. For instance, to comply with the social distancing requirement, most schools transitioned to online learning, while some have been forced to temporarily shutdown if such technology was unavailable [ 2 ]. Although these measures have significantly reduced the spread of the virus, they have also introduced several challenges, severely impacting the educational systems worldwide.

Deaf education has been facing a unique set of challenges during COVID-19. To start with, distance learning platforms were quickly adopted mainly for non-disabled students, since they represent the mainstream [ 3 ]. Despite their absolute right to access information, deaf students were initially left out of distance learning under the justification of them constituting a hard to manage population, requiring more specialized educational approaches [ 4 ]. In general, the social distancing measures have led to the exclusion and isolation of deaf students, from instructors who could not promptly respond to their educational needs [ 1 ]. In addition, deaf students have experienced significant difficulties with information sharing. These issues include inadequate access to sign interpreters, loss of visual cues, auditory signal issues arising from the use of face masks, lack of transcripts or captions to lectures, etc. [ 5 ]. As noted by Swanwick et al. [ 6 ], the United Nations [ 7 ] made a declaration titled “Disability-Inclusive Response to COVID-19”, which acknowledged that people with disabilities took the hardest hit during the pandemic and their education requires immediate assistance.

While existing literature has focused on improving accessibility for disabled students in higher education, the pandemic has exposed critical weaknesses of e-learning systems for students with special needs that may need to be addressed. One way to strengthen virtual education is to identify challenges and barriers that appeared during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the major concerns that students with disabilities had to cope with was adjusting to a completely new format of remote learning and instructions [ 8 – 10 ]. With the strict regulations that all students had to comply with, students with disabilities, in general, and deaf students, in particular, were the most to suffer from them [ 2 , 11 – 13 ]. The goal of this paper is to review and expose the major challenges that deaf students were facing during the pandemic. We start with reviewing all research papers that were written as a response to these challenges; then, we analyze them to extract and categorize all the highlighted problems. Given that several studies have identified those challenges, our research aims to systematically collect and categorize them. This study reviews 34 papers, to extract challenges and their corresponding key mitigation plans.

Reviewing literature on the challenges facing deaf education during the current pandemic can provide solutions to e-learning beyond the pandemic. Previous studies have focused on general e-learning experiences, such as Mseleku [ 14 ], while others have looked at accessibility to online education by generally disabled students [ 15 ]. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to review the literature related to accessibility challenges in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The contributions of this paper are:

• A literature review of 34, peer-reviewed, deaf and hearing-impaired publications related to deaf students education during the COVID-19 pandemic, to provide a catalog for future research in this area;
• An exploration of the challenges faced by deaf and hearing-impaired students during the COVID-19 pandemic;
• Key takeaways extracted from the reviewed studies, for researchers and educators, to improve the learning experience of deaf students;
• A replication package of our survey for extension purposes [ 16 ].

This literature review study is structured as follows: Sect.  2 surveys prior work on technological platforms in education and challenges of deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Section  3 outlines our research questions. Section  4 provides an overview of the methodology used in this study to investigate the challenges of deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Section  5 explains our research findings, and Sect.  6 discusses our results. Finally, Sect.  7 highlights the limitations of our research, and Sect.  8 summarizes our conclusions and future work directions.

Related work

Deaf community.

In contrast to hearing individuals, a larger percentage of deaf individuals had difficulty trusting, understanding, and accessing COVID-19 information [ 17 ]. The arrival of COVID-19 disrupted a large volume of sectors around the world. Given the substantial number of government and public health announcements concerning COVID-19, information about the virus was communicated in an irregular and inconsistent manner, putting specific communities at an elevated risk. Due to language isolation, the deaf community, in particular, found it difficult to obtain information about COVID-19 [ 18 ]. Deaf individuals typically experience challenges in acquiring health information, resulting in substantial disparities in health knowledge and discrepancies in preventative health care [ 19 ], and this gap has increased during the COVID-19 epidemic. For example, in the beginning of the epidemic, the sign language related to COVID-19 was inadequately established, resulting in misinformation and confusion [ 20 ]. As the media started intensively focusing on the virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) failed to deliver a conventional sign for COVID-19, leaving this responsibility to deaf communities. Thus, a multitude of pandemic-related signs were created throughout the world [ 21 ]. For instance, the Brazilian deaf community used more than three signs for the virus, leading to uncertainty. As it was initially assumed that COVID-19 was transferred from bats, one approved sign for COVID-19 in Brazil was a hand gesture that resembled a bat bite. According to the authors of the study, this sign generated an unintended fear of animal bites and misperceptions about the genuine risk of COVID-19 transmission [ 21 ]. In fact, the risk of contamination and transmission of infection might be elevated owing to the linguistic discrepancies across global Deaf communities.

Moreover, the frequent usage of face masks during the pandemic also impacted the lives of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) individuals, as many of them rely on lip-reading as a way of successful communication with hearing individuals. However, the ability to lip-read is hampered by wearing face masks. Grote and Izagaren [ 22 ] highlighted the detrimental impact on adaptability of the Deaf community in the UK owning to the “#MaskforAll” social media campaign. Even the substitutes for face masks such as transparent face masks are inconvenient to obtain and do not meet the medical standards. The authors concluded that the widespread use of face masks poses a major threat of isolation to the Deaf community, not only in the UK but to Deaf communities across the world.

Deaf education

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was presented with several barriers in various areas, including the educational sector. An abrupt and unexpected shift of the learning system to distance learning brought with it new obstacles. Alcazar et al. [ 23 ] highlighted the significance of speech-to-visual approach incorporated into distance learning systems as it enables the understanding of material and addresses the individual needs of deaf students.

On the contrary, Baroni and Lazzari [ 24 ] investigated the distance learning experiences of deaf students and revealed that translation, technical, and time problems posed a severe challenge. The teachers and students have faced difficulties adjusting to distant learning at all grade levels and courses [ 25 ]. A study examined the response of the Caribbean education system to the COVID-19 pandemic and concluded that, in addition to the struggle of teachers and students to adapt to remote learning, the courses were not designed to be taught remotely [ 26 ].

The World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) stated that learning materials that are available online might not be intended for deaf students, the accessibility of the internet for some families might be limited, and they might lack the availability of visual and linguistic input [ 27 ]. Moreover, the absence of linguistic support can cause difficulty for deaf students to decode a language [ 28 ]. E-learning might promote inclusive strategies, for instance, providing a written transcripts of classes or captioned videos; however, the complexity of written language might be incomprehensible to the students [ 29 ]. WFD [ 27 ] highlighted that deaf students are expected to learn from homes where sign language is rarely practiced. Moreover, with e-learning, deaf students can be removed from deaf schools with a sign-rich environment. Therefore, with e-learning, the education system for deaf students is at risk of the linguistic barrier due to insufficient availability of sign language [ 30 ].

Pacheco et al. [ 31 ] investigated the difficulties of providing instructional accommodations for students with disabilities in schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many deaf students lack the necessary instructional attention in distance learning [ 32 ]. Replication of physical attention provided to deaf students at schools is not possible at homes with prevalent accessibility issues. Another profound problem that hinders the effectiveness of distance learning is improper training of teachers [ 31 ]. In distance learning, students learn in a group format. Therefore, this setting lacks the individual attention needed for deaf students. More importantly, the communication gap, due to the inappropriate handling of physical gestures, significantly hinders students’ learning curve. Even parents’ involvement in such classes was found to be difficult for a regular learning process to be sustainable [ 33 ]. In addition to the difficulties faced by deaf students, their families also deal with critical issues such as technical support and accessibility of the learning environment. Sommer [ 34 ] conducted a study in the USA and revealed that inaccessibility of information for deaf students during the COVID-19 pandemic had a severe emotional impact on them. In a survey by Krishnan et al. [ 1 ], the authors found unfamiliarity with hearing devices, online devices, distractions are the main difficulties DHH students are facing with e-learning platforms.

E-learning platforms

The evolution of technology has greatly improved the education sector, especially with the introduction of learning management systems (LMSs). According to Iqbal [ 35 ], an LMS is a learner-centered technology that focuses on the logistics of managing learners, distribution of learning content, enables interactions between learners and teachers, among other functions. As defined by Dobre [ 36 ], LMSs can be considered as “a set of software platforms, delivered to users by instructors through internet and by the use of various hardware means, having as purpose the delivery in the shortest time possible a high level of knowledge into a domain assuring in the same time a full management of the entire educational cycle, including data and information.” Such a definition provides an elaborate explanation of the purposes of LMS and also shows why the systems have become very crucial in the COVID-19 pandemic when social interactions have been curtailed.

As indicated by Oliveira et al. [ 37 ], LMS systems emerged in the 1990s when the first web browsers were developed and have been greatly improved since then. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Mtebe [ 38 ] indicates that LMS was used either to supplement face-to-face instruction, or to facilitate distance education for students who could not access physical classrooms. However, Alqahtani and Rajkhan [ 39 ] indicate that, due to the current pandemic, many institutions have been forced to shut down and offer learning through LMS. There are a large number of LMSs that are currently in use, but the most common are: Blackboard, canvas, Moodle, among others [ 40 ]. Thus, educational systems adopt LMS depending on their needs, functionalities, and preferences. Batanero et al. [ 41 ] found that integration of the Moodle learning platform enhanced the performance of deaf students by 46.25%. According to Batanero-Ochaíta et al. [ 42 ], the deaf students showed constructive attitude toward Moodle learning platform; however, their perceptions varied on the ease of use and complexity of the platform.

Rather than simply making online course materials more accessible, additional practices must be ingrained in the university settings that convey comfort and safety [ 43 – 45 ]. Alshawabkeh et al. [ 46 ] suggested a formal IT training with an interpreter for the deaf students prior to using LMS.

Research questions

This study aims to explore the barriers of deaf and hard-of-hearing students in education during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study may help identify and critically expose the wide range of concerns and difficulties faced by deaf students during the pandemic. Furthermore, our literature review findings may serve as a comprehensive source for improving the deaf education. Specifically, we investigate the following Research Questions (RQs):

RQ 1 : What challenges and concerns are deaf and hard-of-hearing students in higher education facing with an online education during the COVID-19 pandemic?

RQ1 investigates a series of challenges and concerns during remote learning that deaf and hard-of-hearing students had to endure on the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic. We will explore more in-depth the findings related to recently published work in this domain and discuss implications since COVID-19 emerged as a global humanitarian problem.

RQ 2 : What are emerging solutions to better handle challenges faced in deaf education during the COVID-19 pandemic?

RQ2 investigates the extent to which emerging in-demand solutions can be proposed to overcome some of the major barriers pinpointed in RQ1. At a larger schema, these solutions can serve as a mediating, non-perfunctory source of information to cope better with remote learning. It will shed light on alternating strategies and guidelines that could facilitate deaf and hearing-impaired remote learning, and methods that could be implemented within institutions globally for a more efficient remote learning.

Methodology

This present research is a literature review. It explores the existing most up-to-date scholarly sources relating to the subject of the research to answer the research questions. The objective is to explore the key challenges of the deaf and hearing-impaired in education during the COVID-19 pandemic. This section is divided into the three phases followed when selecting relevant publications: planning, execution, and synthesis. Each of these steps is explained in the following sections.

This step entailed refining our search strategy for literature. In line with the literature review methodology, we formulated a set of keywords related to our study, which we searched on various digital repositories.

Search keywords

We conducted a pilot search [ 47 ] to guide our formulation of search keywords in two repositories: ACM and IEEE. We wanted to identify the synonyms and words that are used when describing the barriers to deaf education during the COVID-19 period. Therefore, our search was restricted to the abstracts and titles only. Such a strategy helped in avoiding false positives. The search string used is as follows:

Digital libraries

A literature search was carried out in the following libraries: Scopus, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, Web of Science, Springer Link, Virtual Health Library, Wiley, ERIC, and Science Direct. We selected the nine libraries in order to ensure maximum coverage of the topic so that no important study was left out and utilized by similar studies (e.g., [ 48 ]). The various libraries queried are provided in Table  1 . The libraries contained studies related to ours and in the fields of hearing-impaired education.

Overview of targeted digital libraries used to collect published work

Inclusion/exclusion criteria

These criteria were useful in filtering and pruning our search results so that we were only left with those publications that were aligned with our study. For example, it was essential to ensure that we got studies in the education context and written in English while excluding those in the medical area and not peer-reviewed. We also included papers that were available in digital format and published during the COVID-19 period. The inclusion/ exclusion criteria are given in Table  2 . Although we aimed at a final pool of relevant papers, the initial search results helped in manual filtering to evaluate the appropriateness of the studies for our research. For example, it was crucial to know the kind of obstacles they identified. Regarding the time frame, we restricted it to 2020, 2021, and 2022, which are the years that have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Backward/forward snowballing

We undertook snowballing to add valuable articles to the ones we had obtained using automated search. According to Wohlin [ 49 ], snowballing involves reviewing papers that have emerged for a literature search and identifying articles that have cited the given paper (forward snowballing) or those that have been cited in the paper (backward snowballing). We conducted the snowballing in a closed recursive manner to make it more effective. As a result, we got a total of 10 articles from snowballing, from where we selected 7 that met our selection criteria. Finally, we included the articles from the snowballing activity to make our final count of 34 articles.

Exclusion during data extraction

Researchers can still eliminate some of the selected articles even at the data extraction stage. Such a situation occurs when the researcher discovers that a paper is a duplicate of another or meets the exclusion criteria. For example, we had an article that provided general information about communication obstacles during COVID-19 without focusing on deaf students [ 50 ], while another took a medical perspective instead of an educational one [ 51 ].

This section depicts the search results from the various digital libraries. The first search in all nine repositories gave a total of 126 articles. After that, we used four stages to evaluate the most relevant publications to our study. The first stage involved removing duplicate and retracted publications, where 6 articles were eliminated, and 120 publications proceeded to the next phase. The second stage was the title and abstract filtering, where we utilized our inclusion and exclusion criteria. In total, we removed 51 publications and allowed 69 to move to the next phase. For instance, the application of our inclusion and exclusion criteria led to the elimination of grey literature, non-peer-reviewed materials, and articles published before 2020, among others. The third stage was full-text filtering, which led to the removal of 42 articles and allowing 27 to move to the next phase. The final stage involved performing both forward and backward snowball sampling [ 49 ] that led to the addition of 7 articles. In total, 34 articles were selected for further analysis. Figure  1 shows the search execution process. Finally, we presented the titles of the 34 papers illustrated in the form of a word cloud as depicted in Fig.  2 .

Overview of publications filtering process

Word cloud of the titles of the selected papers

During the synthesis phase, we examined the collected data with regard to how they could meet our research objectives. We classified the articles according to their country of origin and year of publication in order to understand where and when the barriers to deaf education were experienced. We ensured that every study was thoroughly scrutinized for concrete evidence and that all facts were provided. Careful examination was done to collect all data related to deaf education obstacles during COVID-19. For each study, we extracted the disability type such as deaf, hard-of-hearing, or hearing impairment, the year of publication, study methodology, source of information, approach of collecting data, participant type (i.e., teachers, students, leaders), study sample size, and study location.

To reduce bias in our data, we utilized a peer-review strategy, where all researchers reviewed the data, and any points of contention were discussed. The data was transferred to a Google Spreadsheet to ensure the collaboration of all the authors was in sync during the research. It is important to state that three of the authors were familiar with the scope of studies and have made similar publications and contributions in the past [ 52 – 56 ].

This section reports the findings that we obtained by synthesizing various articles according to the scope of two research questions asked in this study. We analyzed a total of 34 articles. We report the characteristics of this set of studies extensively in Table  3 . The data collected from this set of studies ranged from 2020 to 2022. The types of methods that these studies carried out are represented via a taxonomy as depicted in Fig.  3 . The figure provides a grouping of all the studies according to the methodology and methods used in the studies and the focus of the studies. From the figure, the most notable and common studies were those conducted in the form of surveys, interviews, and observational studies. The most common artifacts used to carry out those types of studies included social media, questionnaires, phone interviews, and other related documents such as guidelines. Regarding the focus of the studies, the most popular target groups in the surveys, interviews, and other studies were hard-of-hearing and deaf. Using the literature taxonomy, we were able to overview the studies we selected.

Overview of literature taxonomy of the selected research papers in our dataset. It highlights the methodology used and the targeted user group

Detailed information regarding the 34 papers selected: these publications report major challenges that students with special needs, specifically deaf and hard-of-hearing students faced in academic institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic

The publications are categorized by year, user, methodologies, affiliations, sample size, and location

In Fig.  4 , we wanted to establish the country of origin from which the studies were done. According to the collected data, we notice that most of the studies were conducted in the USA. The second-highest number of studies originated from Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Greece, Italy, and Malaysia, with all other countries having one study each. Such findings can help motivate scholars from countries with few or no studies to research deaf challenges in their locations. Figure  5 shows an overview of the types of the dataset used across all the 20 studies. It is evident from the figure that social media was the most common and diverse data collection method that was used in the studies. It is possible to speculate that most researchers used social media platforms because of their popularity and because their use has not been affected by the social distancing measures implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. The extensive use of technology during the pandemic, especially in education, also means that students with learning disabilities faced all kinds of challenges of different ranges from the unsuitability of technologies to health matters. That does not rule out the fact that similar challenges were not observed in other countries such as Indonesia or Italy and other countries. In fact, we noticed that the types of challenges that deaf students experienced were almost uniform across countries. It is important to place our findings within the context of the two research questions that we developed in this study.

Distribution of publications across countries

Overview of types of dataset used across 20 studies

In this research question, we wanted to identify the issues that deaf students were facing during the pandemic. From our findings, we categorized the challenges into four categories: technological; educational; accessibility; and usage issues, and health-related.

• Technology-related challenges Our main focus was to explore how technical issues affected deaf education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Deaf education faced four challenges: unavailability of hearing devices, disruptions during online lessons, and lack of familiarity with the online devices [ 1 , 11 , 57 – 59 ]. It is noted that the challenges in deaf education during COVID-19 can be grouped into three groups: technological, organizational, and methodical [ 60 , 61 ]. Technological challenges are those related to accessibility; organization depends on the collaboration between teachers, while methodical indicates how the instructions were taught. Mohammed [ 62 ] pointed out that video quality, internet stability, and language modality posed major technological barriers to distance learning for deaf students. Aljedaani et al. [ 63 ] presented the challenges faced by deaf students in distance learning and found that among 8 of the participants, 96.9% faced issues with internet connectivity at home and 72% of the responses showed inaccessibility of the content. Our interpretation of the aforementioned challenges is as follows: While students in general picked up quickly using new technology [ 64 ], this was not regarded as a doable option for students with disabilities [ 2 ]. On the contrary, they were faced with a series of challenges with the setup of the technology. First, the students with disabilities found it challenging to use the recommended technology. That was primarily because the interfaces of the software and applications were not designed to accommodate students with hearing disabilities [ 65 , 66 ]. Second, students experienced enormous challenges adapting the use of video conferencing for synchronous lectures [ 61 , 67 ]. Third, it was overwhelmingly difficult for students with hearing needs to follow conversations with multiple signers communicating simultaneously [ 11 , 68 , 69 ]. The lack of simultaneous translation was also one of the major obstacles to address [ 61 ]. Finally, delays in mainstream and remote classroom setup while interacting with deaf students or asking questions were a significant problem (since deaf students use sign language to ask questions), which the translator then interprets to the instructor [ 70 , 71 ]. The findings of Alqraini and Alasim [ 72 ] highlighted deaf students’ lack of focus during classes, as they choose to play games on their devices instead of paying attention to the ongoing lesson. We believe that such issues require solutions to facilitate deaf education.
• Education system-related challenges We also aimed to identify those challenges that were related to learning and the educational system. We found that, while most of the students got adjusted fairly quickly to the remote online system [ 73 ], this became a huge barrier, especially for deaf students [ 72 , 74 ]. Even in a typical classroom setting, d/DHH students generally attend classes with the support of a special education team due to their special needs [ 75 ]. However, working from home, this new adjustment, in reality, created substantial barriers for deaf and hard-of-hearing students [ 3 ]. Researchers [ 46 , 59 , 76 ] underscored that the lack of sign language interpreter hinders the understanding of deaf students with inadequate vocabulary knowledge. Even though the interpreters were present during the online classes, however, due to small visuals, it became challenging for the students to understand. Alsindi et al. [ 77 ] highlighted that in addition to miscommunication between teacher and student, the lack of interpreter’s knowledge regarding art and design hindered the performance of students. Deaf students have also suffered from a lack of access to education and welfare services, such as inadequate sign language interpreting avenues, the difficulty of lip-reading when teachers are wearing masks, limited direct support by teachers, among others [ 58 , 78 – 80 ]. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened social exclusion among deaf students, especially with the disruption of daily interactions with other people, lack of access to information, and inadequate sign language interpreters [ 6 , 61 ]. The exclusion is caused by lack of internet access, poor infrastructure, poverty that impedes lack of access to high-quality educational materials, barriers relating to lack of accessible learning management systems (LMSs), inability to use the LMS to access the content, and LMSs that do not cater for the needs of deaf students [ 2 ]. Deaf education in some countries has been affected by a lack of resources in public schools, unpreparedness among teachers of deaf children, greater exclusion, and obstacles such as lack of real-time transcription services, technical issues, and unavailability of subtitles on videos [ 3 , 58 , 72 ]. The suggested problems call for improvement of the education system to make it more conducive to deaf education.
• Physical accessibility challenges Adequate, accessible experience for students with hearing disabilities was an unattainable goal [ 59 , 61 , 81 ], even though distance learning equipment and technologies such as video-conference technologies, different websites, electronic platforms, applications, and/or various databases became available for most disabled students [ 9 , 82 ]. This was not the case for underdeveloped countries [ 83 ]. Furthermore, some students with hearing disabilities lived in areas where there was hardly any access to the internet [ 13 , 84 ]. To add another layer of barriers, some students with disabilities did not possess even basic technologies [ 79 ]. Hence, without physical attendance, remote learning for students with auditory access needs became a huge struggle for students with disabilities [ 81 ]. We also established that, during the current pandemic, wearing masks seemed to have become the major impediment for students who were deaf or with hearing impairments [ 85 ]. Indeed, face masks became the worst enemy for hard-of-hearing and deaf students. Most importantly, a cloth face mask inhibited speech reading and blocked muffling sound [ 81 ]. They even prevented students from reading lips. The other concern pertained to both audibility and intelligibility of speech. Due to the wearing of masks, students with hearing issues found the teachers voices completely diminished through the use of masks and shields [ 86 ]. This made the student–instructor communication poor and inaccessible. Physical distance also became a significant obstacle between students and faculty only because this unconventional communication reduced speech audibility and intelligibility [ 12 , 87 ].
• Health-related challenges The other most critical challenge pertains to the mental health of disability students [ 88 ]. Students with hearing disabilities showed four times more than other students increased symptoms of anxiety, depression, and emotional challenges compared with the general population [ 89 ]. We established that some health-related issues that emerged during and before the pandemic were affecting deaf education. For instance, deaf students have faced emotional challenges due to isolation from their classmates and lack of access to important information during the pandemic [ 34 , 90 ]. The fact that most deaf students have experience impractical delays has also led to emotional and social issues among them [ 1 , 70 ]. All these challenges have led to numerous mental health problems and unforeseen psychological impacts [ 91 ].

In this section, we will discuss the proposed solutions to the most prominent issues that have been identified in the previous section. The technology used in deaf education must ensure that the audio is clear and with self-explanatory images, the activities taught should be easy due to the online learning challenges, and there should be concerted efforts from all stakeholders [ 60 ]. Furthermore, deaf students should be given mental health services, training on pragmatic skills, be provided with hearing aids, be encouraged to read, and also be facilitated to gain information during the pandemic [ 1 , 34 , 70 , 90 ]. It is also recommended that parents look for suitable online educational programs, find opportunities for exposure to deaf students, communicate with deaf and hard-of-hearing students, enable deaf and hard-of-hearing students to socialize, and assist them in getting the services they need [ 92 ]. A combination of government-led and community-led responses has also provided greater educational and social support for deaf students [ 78 ]. It is also proposed that recognition of group rights will lead to greater inclusion for deaf students, so that cultural and linguistic accessibility can be offered to the population [ 6 ]. For example, sign language should be considered and recognized as a language like any other.

It is also important to develop videos with captions and interpretations, whether offline, online through YouTube or cloud-based Zoom recordings, which are especially useful to the deaf community [ 8 , 10 , 58 , 72 , 74 , 82 , 93 ]. An important aspect of the videos is that they must be thoroughly tested for validity to ensure their effectiveness, and revisions are done in order to improve the quality of the videos. Sutton [ 10 ] also notes the importance of providing interpreters and speech-to-text capabilities for deaf students during the pandemic to aid their learning. It is suggested that governments should utilize inclusive educational models, improve the accessibility of deaf students to various services, provide deaf-friendly masks, expand television programming, and hire more teachers in order to have a favorable number of staff assisting deaf students [ 3 , 79 ]. Low-income families should be given financial assistance to purchase electronic equipment for their children as recommended by Alqraini and Alasim [ 72 ]. The authors also proposed that a quiet environment should be created for the students during their lessons. [ 62 ] suggested the provision of standard educational technologies to teachers and students, proper training of teachers [ 46 , 57 , 84 ], hosting workshops concerning deaf culture, and video translation of textbooks in sign language to ensure the effectiveness of distance learning.

Karampidis et al. [ 94 ] recommended that distance learning platforms should be integrated with “Hercules”, a bidirectional translator that translates five languages, including Greek, Cypriot, British, German, Slovenian, and Portuguese, to their respective sign languages and vice versa. Institutions must incorporate a better approach to provide accessible technology that individuals with diverse needs can adapt during the pandemic [ 63 ]. Another study [ 95 ] suggested the use of ICT (Information Communication Technology) to conduct online classes in the pandemic. The uninterpreted-learning ICT models were preferred by the participants of the case study [ 84 ] over Zoom classes. Mathews et al. [ 96 ] stated that to address the communication gap in distance learning, interpreters have had to employ a variety of specialized expertise, interact with one another, and actively involve both their hearing clients and deaf communities in diverse settings. The study also recommended vocabulary development of the interpreters to convey the lessons more conveniently. Alshawabkeh et al. [ 46 ] suggested that deaf students must be trained by an IT professional with a sign language interpreter prior to initiation of distance learning. Students, teachers, and interpreters should collaborate in order to present material simultaneously. They also proposed that teachers involve deaf students in planning the online class before it begins. Institutions should continuously evaluate the deaf student’s feedback to enhance the quality of distance learning. Moreover, the existing LMSs must be provided with additional features for the DHH students [ 77 ].

Our study has also shown that governments should also put in place inclusive emergency plans and improve access to telecommunication services such as the internet to deaf students [ 2 ]. It is also proposed that policy changes should be made to enable deaf adults to participate in early intervention teams and greater collaboration from multi-agency teams in order to have professional teams working toward inclusion and education of deaf children in the pandemic [ 9 ]. Deaf students should have a conducive environment at home, support from parents, online instructional content, access to specialist support, and good access to instructions to mitigate the connectivity challenges [ 11 , 81 ]. It is evident that collaborations from a wide range of stakeholders will provide the necessary support and resources needed for improving deaf education.

Our literature review provides an elaborate overview of the challenges that deaf students have been facing in education during the course of the current pandemic. Furthermore, we also reviewed potential solutions that can be enforced and incorporated by different authors. In this section, we provide notable takeaways from our study.

Takeaway 1: Provide necessary equipment and technology We have established that a lack of equipment such as hearing aids and inaccessibility to the internet are major obstacles impeding deaf education in the COVID-19 pandemic. The problem is worse in rural areas and those with high levels of poverty [ 2 ]. As further indicated by Paatsch and Toe [ 70 ], global research has shown that many deaf students attend mainstream classes that do not have adequate support for the difficulties that such students face. It has also been demonstrated that deaf students face challenges when using Zoom platforms, especially given that the platform has a steep learning curve and its features are not easily understood by all students [ 11 ]. One of the technologies lacking for many deaf students is Remote microphone (RM) hearing assistive technology (HAT), which should be customized to the needs of every student [ 81 ]. It is important to address such issues in order to promote remote deaf education during the current pandemic.

Takeaway 2: Improve accessibility and usage of learning materials We have noted that many institutions have digitized their content; however, it is still inaccessible due to lack of captioning and unclear audio, among other issues. Such a finding is consistent with Fernandes et al. [ 93 ], who found that learning materials for deaf students should meet the validity and effectiveness so that they can be of help to deaf students. However, it is not translated even when such content is accessed, and there are no speech-to-text services. Furthermore, deaf students find it hard to follow the teacher during virtual classes, when several faces are appearing on the screen simultaneously, or when captions’ speed is fast [ 92 ]. The lack of self-explanatory images, presence of background music, and inclusion of unnecessary decorative details also make the accessibility of learning materials difficult [ 60 ]. It is important to provide visual materials and techniques that will help deaf students learn more effectively [ 61 ]. Another accessibility challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic is that the use of face masks by teachers on online platforms makes it hard for deaf students to read lips, which is a major challenge in their learning that should be overcome by using clear masks [ 10 ]. The provision of accessible learning materials will be very important in improving deaf education.

Takeaway 3: Improve collaboration and partnership It has been clear that all stakeholders should be involved in improving deaf education. The proposed solutions indicate the important role played by the government, teachers, parents, and specialists in improving education outcomes for deaf students. Using the example of Saudi Arabia [ 2 ], governments can play a crucial role to help in creating a conducive environment for deaf education. Furthermore, in Italy, Tomasuolo et al. [ 78 ] explain the crucial role of stakeholder lobbying by deaf organizations such as the World Federation of deaf (WFD), the Italian National Deaf Association, among others. It is noted that collaboration between deaf community members, deaf organizations, scholars, and activists in many countries around the world has led to greater access to education, improved use of captions, greater use of Text apps, broadcasting of content that considers the deaf community, utilization of clear masks, among others [ 9 , 79 ]. Therefore, such collaborations and partnerships provide important opportunities for improving the quality of deaf education in the current pandemic.

Takeaway 4: Cater for the mental health needs of deaf and impaired students We have found that some students developed mental health issues during the pandemic, while others already had them prior. As explained by Krishnan et al. [ 1 ], such a situation has been brought about by the social distancing and related protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has added to their isolation and lack of social interactions. Swanwick et al. [ 6 ] indicate that deaf students faced social exclusion even before the pandemic, but the current situation has exposed and deepened the issue. The pandemic has also led to negative emotional responses from deaf students because the pandemic has led to the school closing, fear of illness, social distancing, among other family problems [ 34 ]. It has been noted that deaf students are psychologically resistant to the effects of the pandemic but show less mental resilience compared to normal hearing students [ 90 ]. Providing counseling and psychological services is crucial.

Takeaway 5: Simplify the LMSs Our study has shown that the mere availability of the LMSs does not guarantee quality online education for deaf students. Indeed, the switch to online learning has been abrupt due to COVID-19, and most deaf students faced tremendous challenges in accessing the content on LMS platforms [ 2 ]. It has also been observed that there were predominant challenges in ensuring an uninterrupted-learning environment via video conferencing, for example, whether Zoom could adequately display LMS-located content or not [ 74 ]. Such systems need to be simplified and customized to improve their usability features and look and feel for deaf students. LMSs are extremely important for remote access to materials and learning for deaf students. The suggestion for their simplification is a crucial takeaway that should be taken into account so that deaf and hard-of-hearing students can fully take advantage of such platforms.

Recommendations for future research

• Future researchers may investigate the techniques of refining LMSs to improve their accessibility. Such a proposition is made because this study has established that many deaf students are unable to fully take advantage of LMS systems [ 63 ]. Potentially, scholars may look at improving the functionality of such systems, customizing them to meet the needs of individual students, and simplifying their navigation.
• Scholars can investigate how mental health issues among deaf students can be mitigated. It is apparent that deaf students are facing a hard time during the pandemic, and the inability to cope can lead to stress. Researchers can investigate the possible ways of addressing the educational and socioeconomic factors that should be addressed so that such students have peace of mind and better mental health outcomes.
• It would also be important to explore how stakeholder engagement can be improved to harness their efforts to help deaf students. It has been established in this study that the roles of various stakeholders are very important in ensuring quality education for the deaf. Other scholars may utilize stakeholder engagement models and frameworks to explain how such stakeholders can work with each other collaboratively so that the learning outcomes of deaf students can be achieved.
• Since we have established a challenge relating to learning materials, subsequent studies could investigate the factors that lead to their inadequacy. For example, it would be important to establish whether institutions get enough funding from the government to purchase materials and other resources that are needed to educate deaf students. In addition, the maintenance of such materials, ensuring efficient and equitable use, as well as their administration, should be evaluated.
• Future researchers can investigate the issues facing other sections of the deaf population, such as immigrants, or across different age-groups. It has been established that there are wide disparities in learning and education outcomes between such groups and the rest of the population. Given that being deaf also comes with unique challenges, it would be important to understand how the intersectionality between social disadvantage and deafness affects deaf students. For instance, it would be prudent to explore the challenges that deaf students from poor backgrounds face during the pandemic.

Limitations

As with any other study, certain limitations are present in this study. We conducted this study using a systematic literature review process [ 98 , 99 ]. Our literature review highlights the major obstacles to deaf and hard-of-hearing distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the fact that our study is limited to impaired and hearing students, there are several limitations worth noting. We explain these limitations as follows.

Data completeness The first limitation of the systematic literature review is the scope and appropriate selection of digital libraries. Therefore, we selected nine diverse electronic data sources. The next step was to ensure that the relevant literature publications were identified and included. We reasoned, though, that there might be other sources relevant within our domain search. Regardless, we attempted to mitigate this limitation as follows. We seeded a domain search with a set of search queries. If sufficient domain expertise is available, the search queries can be created manually; otherwise, a snowballing technique can be used [ 49 , 100 ] in which a small number of initial search terms are used to retrieve a set of results, and then, commonly occurring domain-specific phrases are identified and used to seed further search queries. We also employed an iterative strategy for our term-list construction. Different research communities might likely refer to the same concept or term differently. Hence, the iterative strategy ensured that adequate terms were used in the search process.

Taxonomy bread-and-depth The second limitation is the validity of the constructed taxonomy. We reason whether the taxonomy has sufficient breadth and depth to ensure that accurate classification and systematic analysis are achieved within the deaf and hearing disability domain’s scope. To mitigate this limitation, we employed a well-known content analysis method. In this case, the taxonomy was continuously filtered and evolved to account for every essential component of the paper included. This iterative process boosted our confidence that the taxonomy incurred substantially good coverage for the methods and types of disabilities that were included and examined throughout this literature review.

Objectiveness The third limitation refers to the objectiveness of the study. Typically this reflects on possible biases or flaws in the results. To mitigate this limitation, we have examined each reviewer’s bias by cross-checking the papers. What that means is that no paper received only one reviewer. Thus, multiple reviewers were involved in the process. Furthermore, we have also obtained the summary of the conclusions according to a collection of categorized papers, rather than following only individual reviewers’ interpretations or views with one goal only to avoid bias.

Now that we have identified the barriers to distance learning faced by deaf and hard-of-hearing during the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe future researchers would benefit from this study.

Conclusion and further work

In this study, we conducted a comprehensive literature review with the aim to investigate the chief challenges that education has faced recently by deaf and hard-of-hearing students during the COVID-19 pandemic. In summary, our research contributions provide substantial evidence about the immediate need to investigate the barriers that we emphasized in the previous section. Furthermore, this early contribution of the present work opens an opportunity for the research community and the educational sector to address these needs broadly and globally with similar interest and care. Additionally, our work directly contributes to the literature by providing a detailed analysis of online learning challenges for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Most critically, it brings forward attention to recommending educational systems to be more accessible during pandemic crises and leverage teaching strategies that can be easily incorporated even in the face of environmental crisis. In addition, we have also disseminated our data as a supplementary electronic file for the research community to engage more extensively in a similar line of research and replicate our work for further advancement of SLR research.

In future work, we will investigate these challenges by extending it further by leveraging an interview-based study with deaf and hard-of-hearing students, where we can understand each problem and propose possible improvements in regard to these problems for individuals and groups. Continuing further this line of research may have an impact on improving and refining existing distance learning pedagogical methodologies and enable participation of the deaf community word-widely beyond the current educational deficiencies within the realm of the accessibility domain.

Declarations

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Challenges That Still Exist for the Deaf Community

What life is like for the deaf and hard of hearing (HOH) has changed significantly in the past half-century. Policy changes and new technologies have provided solutions for many, and yet some hurdles have stayed the same.

The Soukup family—three generations of deaf men—have watched these changes and roadblocks unfold. When a big storm destroyed Ben Soukup Sr.’s farm in 1960, he went to banks all over town to get a loan to rebuild. Every one of them denied his application for one simple reason: He was deaf.

His son never forgot the experience of watching his dad lose his farm and ended up dedicating his life to helping deaf individuals communicate with the world around them, a legacy carried on by his own son, Chris, nearly half a century later.

Ben Soukup Jr. founded the nonprofit Communication Service for the Deaf (CSD), one of a number of nonprofits in the U.S. dedicated to empowering deaf and HOH individuals.   Chris has continued the work as the organization’s CEO.

Years after Ben Soukup Sr. lost his farm, the deaf and hard of hearing community would go on to experience some of the greatest advancements in the United States and globally. However, a great number of challenges persist.

Advancements

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) helped pave the way for easier communication between the hearing and deaf or HOH individuals. Passed in 1990, the law was a major turning point for the deaf community in the United States.

The ADA sought to level the playing field for those with disabilities by requiring public and private entities like schools and telecommunication services to provide accommodations for those who are deaf or have hearing loss. The impact was monumental.

Employers were no longer allowed to discriminate against those who were deaf or HOH. Relay services allowed some to make phone calls for the very first time, no longer needing to rely on hearing friends and neighbors call their cable company or make a doctor’s appointment.

Captions appeared below the anchors during the nightly news, and schools and hospitals began providing interpretation services for those who use American Sign Language. The communication chasm between the hearing and non-hearing worlds began to narrow.

The emergence of the internet and electronic devices continued to transform the way deaf and HOH individuals communicate. As email, online messengers, texting, and smartphones become increasingly popular and accessible, speaking and hearing are no longer required to do everyday tasks like ordering takeout or disputing a bill.

Video conferencing services, like Skype or Zoom, have made it significantly easier for sign language users to talk with each other or for remote interpreters to assist with conversations with hearing friends and colleagues

Social media has allowed deaf and HOH individuals to find and connect with one another more easily—helping those living in rural areas, in particular, to find community and build a support network.

Interpretation services are still needed for many situations, but those in the deaf and HOH community are able to interact with more people on their own than ever before. But while the playing field may indeed be leveling, persistent challenges remain.

Economic Challenges

With the passage of legislation like the ADA, those in the deaf community are no longer strictly relegated to the role of a factory worker or hard laborer, but unemployment and underemployment still disproportionately affect them.

Roughly 8% of U.S. working-age adults who are deaf or HOH were actively looking for work yet still unemployed in 2018, with more finding only part-time or temporary positions—and only about 39.5% were employed full time in 2018, compared to 57.5% of their hearing counterparts.

These same gaps persist in education as well. Despite mandates made by the ADA, typical schools and universities are rarely set up in a way that helps deaf and HOH students thrive, and only a few deaf and HOH educational institutions exist. An estimated 33% of working-age, hearing adults have a bachelor’s degree or higher, but only 18% of those who are deaf or HOH do.

The impact of these employment and educational challenges has a ripple effect. Those in the deaf and HOH community are already at higher risk for depression and anxiety. But evidence from psychologists and sociologists indicates that inadequate employment can also be linked to a host of mental health issues , as well as chronic conditions and substance abuse.

All of this can often complicate efforts to find or hold adequate employment, resulting in a vicious cycle—especially when families are unable to access or afford health care.

The largest chunk of insured Americans gets their coverage through their employers . Unemployed or only part-time employed deaf and HOH adults often depend on public assistance programs like Medicaid , which vary widely by state.

One in 10 U.S. deaf or HOH adults aged 21 to 64 years did not have health insurance in 2018, but that’s actually below the national average for people without a disability. The percentage of insured deaf and HOH adults ranged from under 2% in Massachusetts and Washington DC to 17% in Texas.

This is not to say that all underemployed deaf and HOH individuals will struggle with major health issues, but the economic and emotional hardships often associated with not being able to find sufficient work shouldn’t be dismissed.

Families with deaf or HOH working-age adults make, on average, about $15,000 less per year than families with no disabilites, and an estimated 20% of U.S. working-age adults who are deaf or HOH live in poverty, compared to just 10% of their hearing counterparts.

Poverty has its own way of impacting health. Studies show that low-income Americans with limited education are consistently less healthy than their higher educated, wealthier peers, especially for minority populations. Socioeconomic status and education levels are linked to a wide range of health outcomes—from low birth weight to diabetes.

Because of the interconnectedness of many of these issues, overcoming them will not be a simple legislative fix. While many deaf and HOH individuals receive financial support from initiatives like the Social Security Disability and Supplemental Security Income programs, more can be done to encourage equal access to employment and education.

“Where we are still challenged is by and large in the perception of deaf people and their potential,” said Soukup in an interview with Verywell—the potential for not just adequate employment, but also in gaining equal opportunities to advance in the workplace and educational programs.

For CSD’s part, it is launching a venture capital fund for deaf entrepreneurs, helping companies to identify and hire deaf and HOH workers, and assisting companies like Uber to create training materials in American Sign Language . But to overcome the largest economic hurdles, the United States must also tackle the social challenges faced by those who are deaf and HOH.

Social Challenges

Hearing challenges affect all ages, races, and ethnicities, from the entire spectrum of socioeconomic and geographic backgrounds. Some people were born deaf, some lost hearing as a result of a medical condition, illness, time, or trauma.

Some hear a little with the support of a cochlear implant or hearing aid. Some can’t hear anything at all. In fact, the abilities and needs of those with hearing disabilities are as diverse as the community itself.

American Sign Language (ASL)

We don’t know exactly how many people in the United States use ASL, but estimates range from 100,000 to 1 million. Interpreters—they are not called “translators”—help ASL users communicate with hearing individuals.

The ADA required public institutions and schools to provide ASL interpreters for those who need them. You have probably seen them at news conferences during natural disasters, for example, or even at concerts.

ASL is not simply a gesture-based translation of English. It’s a distinct language with its own complex grammar, pronunciation, and word order rules. Just like English, expressions and messages can vary based on who is doing the interpreting.

Often ASL users do not get to choose the interpreter provided or have the option to request interpreters they prefer over others—and that can impact a deaf or HOH individual’s ability to communicate or understand important information.

Even when a sign language interpreter is provided, sometimes it’s not enough. In certain situations—such as a doctor’s office, for example—a certified deaf interpreter might be needed to work alongside the ASL interpreter to ensure nuances are effectively communicated.

Similarly, while many deaf individuals are also fluent in written English, writing things down might not be the best way to communicate with them—especially if sign language is their primary language—and family members who speak ASL shouldn’t be used as a substitute for certified interpreters.

Social Isolation

Nine in 10 deaf children are born to hearing parents, yet less than a third have family members who sign regularly .

Some families rely on the deaf or HOH person to read lips, but this is remarkably difficult and frequently results in an inaccurate understanding of what’s been said.   It also requires the deaf or HOH person to “listen” in a way that may not be as easy for them as watching someone sign.

You can imagine the emotional and psychological toll of not being able to communicate with those closest to you, let alone others at school or work. For many deaf individuals living in rural areas, they might be the only deaf person in their community or school, making it extremely challenging to build relationships.

"I remember feeling alone, even when around a lot of people, because of communication barriers,” said Soukup. “I knew that most people were not malicious and that communication barriers exist only because of limited exposure to deaf people and a lack of understanding."

In addition to social isolation, some research shows that deaf children, in particular, are more vulnerable to abuse, neglect, and sexual assault than their hearing peers—the results of which can have a lasting impact on both mental and physical health.  

Public Health Challenges

In truth, very little research exists on the health needs of the deaf and HOH population. Health surveys, for example, are often conducted over the phone to the exclusion of deaf people, and most large-scale public health studies do not have ways to parse out data specifically regarding those with hearing loss or deafness.

Many deaf and HOH individuals are unaware of things that might be common knowledge to hearing individuals, such as their own family medical histories or even basic medical terminology because they don’t have the benefit of being able to overhear relatives discussing health matters or other peripheral conversations.

Interactions with medical professionals can be unsatisfying for both parties, as ASL users encounter barriers to qualified interpreters, and medical organizations face difficulties getting reimbursed for providing such services. The experience can be frustrating for all involved.

Suggestions for Improvement

In 2011, researchers published suggestions on ways to close the gap on some of the health inequities encountered by deaf and HOH populations.   They suggest we should:

• ​ Improve access to health information for deaf families . This includes adding captions to all public health information with audio, like informational videos, and ensuring that emergency preparedness plans are made with the input of deaf and HOH individuals.
• Include more deaf and HOH people in the research process . Recruitment for public health research projects should be tailored to the deaf and HOH populations, including providing and collecting information using ASL.
• Collect and analyze new and existing data with deaf and HOH people in mind . This could include the simple addition of deaf-related demographic information on surveys, such as at what age hearing loss occurred.
• Encourage ASL users to participate in public health discussions . Community-based participatory research should actively recruit deaf or HOH individuals to provide insight into all health issues—not just those related to hearing—and interpretation services should be provided at public health conferences and events.
• Encourage deaf and HOH people to work in public health and health-related fields . By embarking on careers in health, deaf and HOH can then help shape training curriculum and health experiences to be more accessible to their deaf and HOH peers.
• Advocate for more funding for communication services . Interpretation services are essential for deaf and HOH populations interacting with the health community, but they can be expensive. Talking with policymakers about the need for and importance of funding for these services could help allow for expanded access to medical services and health-related programs.

A Word From Verywell

Much has changed in the decades since Ben Soukup Sr. was denied a loan, but it will take a collective effort at the local, state, and national levels to continue to make true progress.

That being said, hearing individuals can support these efforts by doing more to seek out and build relationships with deaf and HOH people in their communities, and in doing so, help to close the social chasm between the hearing and deaf or HOH world.

Frequently Asked Questions

As of 2011, it was estimated that 30 million people in the U.S. age 12 and older experienced hearing loss in both ears.

People can be born deaf from genetic factors such as hereditary hearing loss and intrauterine infections. Two examples of intrauterine infections are rubella and cytomegalovirus .

People with deafness communicate through visual, auditory, and tactile modes.

• Visual: American sign language (ASL), cued speech (using hand shapes to differentiate speech sounds), lip reading, and gestures
• Auditory: Assisted hearing with a hearing aid or cochlear implant
• Tactile: Uses the hands and body to communicate

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Hearing loss organizations and associations .

Cornell University. Disability statistics .

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By Robyn Correll, MPH Correll holds a master of public health degree and has over a decade of experience working in the prevention of infectious diseases.

Equity, Access, and Inclusiveness: Supporting Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Young Adolescents in the Mainstreamed Middle School Classroom

Introduction.

The numbers of deaf and hard of hearing (D/HH) students mainstreamed in classrooms today is growing (Kelman & Branco, 2009). More than 87% of D/HH students receive instruction in general education classrooms (U.S. Department of Education, 2015). Within the D/HH student population, more than 40% are students with disabilities, also referred to as “Deaf Plus.” Effectively addressing the needs of this unique population can be challenging for educators, but especially for middle school educators, for several reasons:

• few educators of young adolescents have deep and specific knowledge of how to meet the needs of D/HH middle school students in general education middle school classes (Blanton, Pugach, & Florian, 2011; Florian, 2010);
• not enough research specific to D/HH middle grades students on instructional and managerial strategies to support D/HH students in general education middle grades classrooms;
• middle school teachers have to use generic D/HH strategies and research that they locate on their own and try to implement practices and materials “on the fly” (Guardino & Cannon, 2015);
• little, if any, systematic professional development is offered or available on ways to support D/HH young adolescents in general education middle school classrooms (Benedict, Johnson & Antia, 2011; Lenihan, 2010; Marschark, Shaver, Nagle, & Newman, 2015); and
• minimal collaboration time for teachers, specialists, and support staff of D/HH students to plan, implement, and evaluate effectiveness of approaches targeting needs of this particular student population (Szymanski, Lutz, Shahan, & Gala, 2013).

Tenets of  This We Believe  addressed:

• The school environment is inviting, safe, inclusive, and supportive of all
• Comprehensive guidance and support services meet the needs of young adolescents
• Educators use multiple learning and teaching approaches

To support educators who work with D/HH young adolescents, this research summary presents terms and definitions related to D/HH students to offer a common language, an overview of challenges D/HH young adolescent students can face, strategies middle grades teachers can use to support D/HH young adolescents, and annotated resources related to supporting D/HH students. Additional insight and practices are offered by one of the authors who is deaf and was mainstreamed during his middle and high school grades. Based on his experiences and discussions with D/HH friends and colleagues, he provides effective recommendations for teachers of D/HH students.

The goal of this research summary is three-part: (a) provide a review of the literature related to supporting D/HH students in middle grades environments, (b) enhance understanding of the needs of this unique population, and (c) provide specific, low-cost, high-impact research-based practices for middle grades teachers of D/HH students that can be implemented immediately in general education middle school classrooms. While these strategies provide increased educational access for D/HH young adolescents, they are also effective for most middle school students because they are visual strategies that promote learning for all students but especially the 65% of the population that are visual learners (Bradford, 2011; Ha, 2005; Vakos, 2011).

Overview of D/HH Research and Connection to This We Believe

Much of the research on practices to support D/HH students in schools is not specific to young adolescents. For example, there is significant research on D/HH population that addresses instructional and managerial practices and challenges D/HH students face across the K-12 spectrum or aimed at primary or secondary levels (Easterbrooks & Stephenson, 2006; Guardino & Cannon, 2015; Lukomski, 2008; Marschark, Spencer, Adams, & Sapere, 2011; Wiley, 2013). Other studies on D/HH review early childhood with early hearing detection and intervention (Muñoz, Nelson, Goldgewicht, & Odell, 2011; Wiley, 2013). There is also increasing research on meeting the needs of “Deaf Plus” students who are D/HH students with additional disabilities (Borders, Gardiner-Walsh, Herman, & Turner, 2017; Musyoka, Gentry & Meek, 2017). Further, there is research discussing how to develop emerging literacy and math skills for D/HH students (Dirks & Wauters, 2015; Webb, Lederberg, Branum-Martin, & McDonald, 2015). More current research on D/HH students includes issues of equity, access, and inclusiveness (Borders, et al., 2016; Marschark, Sapere, Convertino, & Pelz, 2008), which are issues across the PK-12 continuum in the United States and around the world (Obiakor, 2011; NMSA, 2010; Schleicher, 2014; UNESCO, 2017).

In 2013, the Laurent Clerk National Deaf Education Center published an in-depth summary of obstacles that D/HH children and their families encounter throughout their academic journey. Five barriers identified were:

• knowledge and education of caregivers, professionals, and the public;
• collaborative efforts;
• qualified professionals and services;
• meeting the needs of the student within the school system; and
• the child’s self-development (Szymanski et al., 2013).

These barriers are addressed as goals in  This We Believe: Keys to Educating Young Adolescents  (NMSA, 2010), which states that educational programs in the middle grades must be developmentally appropriate, challenging, empowering, and equitable in order to provide effective educational experiences for middle school students. Middle grades teachers must purposefully plan and implement curriculum and create a learning environment specific to young adolescents so every student can flourish, and where cognitive, psychomotor, and socio-emotional needs are met. This includes knowing how to use and adapt information on practices to support D/HH young adolescents so they can more effectively meet the developmental and academic needs of this population. If middle school educators know how to help their D/HH students overcome the barriers, students with hearing disabilities (and their families) can experience greater success during the middle grades, which likely will have a positive impact on their high school and post-secondary success (ACT, 2008; Balfanz, 2009; Balfanz, Herzog, & Mac Iver, 2007).

Operational Definitions of Essential Concepts and Terminology

To effectively teach D/HH students, educators must familiarize themselves with the appropriate terminologies used for this specific group. When discussing children who are  deaf , we focus on the medical terminology, meaning the child has hearing loss. When we use the capitalized version of the word  Deaf , we are focusing on the child who is a member of the community (Christiansen & Leigh, 2002). When a person identifies as  hard of hearing , it usually means that they have a range of hearing and use spoken communication as a mode of communication (Israelite, Ower, & Goldstein, 2002). The term  hearing impaired  is a term that is not accepted by deaf or hard of hearing people anymore. It used to be a term that was politically correct but has decreased in use over time (National Association of the Deaf, 2018). Finally, children who are  deaf plus , also identified as DWD, are deaf children with additional disabilities (Wiley, Parnell & Bellhorn, 2016). DWD students are hard of hearing and have a learning disability, Autism, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, cerebral palsy, an intellectual disability, or a combination of these challenges (Gallaudet Research Institute, 2013; Guardino & Cannon, 2015). If a child is both deaf and blind, they may fall in the  deaf-blind  category (Kyzar, Brady, Summers, Haines, & Turnbull, 2016).

Children who are D/HH communicate differently. They may communicate using sign language or using a spoken language. Today, worldwide, there are approximately 271 sign languages used (Harrington, 2018). In the United States, American Sign Language (ASL) is the third most used language (Mitchell, Young, Bachleda, & Karchmer, 2006) and has been recognized as a full language (Valli & Lucas, 2000). It is not the first method of communication parents choose for their deaf child. General education teachers may see students with different types of manually coded English sign systems, such as Signing Exact English or Pidgin Signed English, which are signs that follow the English word order and use extensive lip-reading movements to support spoken English (Scheetz, 2012).

Challenges for D/H Young Adolescents

While middle grades teachers are aware that their students experience rapid changes, they may not fully realize the complications of navigating middle school with a hearing disability. Nor, might middle grades teachers understand the challenges faced by D/HH students who require different modes of communication and must deal with additional barriers related to forming identity and having positive peer interactions. D/HH students may have difficulty with their academics outside of the “typical” young adolescent challenges due to:

• not understanding the interpreters, teachers, support staff, or peers, (Schick, Williams & Kupermintz, 2005; Szymanski et al., 2013);
• a curriculum that may be too fast paced causing inability to take notes or follow along because D/HH students need to use their eyes for visual input (Stinson, Elliot, Kelly, & Liu, 2009);
• class discussions that occur too quickly because by the time the D/HH student recognizes who is speaking, the interaction has already passed. Students may experience language delays, which may affect their understanding of the English language (Antia, Sabers, & Stinson, 2006);
• class discussions that prevent participation or accessibility of information (e.g., turning around and facing the board while talking, mumbling words, looking down or around, brushing hair away from one’s face, pacing back and forth, multiple people talking at once) (Lane, Pillard, Hedberg, 2011);
• social development and interaction challenges common to D/HH students (Batten, Oakes, & Alexander, 2014; Szymanski et al., 2013), especially during the middle school experience (Stinson & Whitmire, 2000);
• lack of collaboration between teachers and support staff (e.g., instructional assistants, interpreters), which can lead to miscommunication and impact the educational access of D/HH students (Salter, Swanwick, & Pearson, 2017);
• language delays due to communication barriers (e.g., lip-reading multiple people, experiencing different teaching styles, transitioning multiple times, and understanding how the academic content can be applicable), which can affect the ability to interact with their peers, understand the rules of social interaction, and effect the ability to regulate their thoughts and feelings (Batten et al., 2014; Cawthon, 2001; Nikolaraizi & Hadjikakou, 2006; Rieffe, 2012); and
• identity formation due to communication barriers and non-acceptance from peers (Batten et al., 2014).

It is necessary for teachers to be proactive in addressing these challenges to ensure that barriers are removed and addressed so D/HH young adolescents have positive and productive learning experiences. Having a tool belt with effective, varied, research-based practices aimed at supporting young adolescents with hearing disabilities is necessary to enable teachers to help cultivate independent, strategic, confident learners. The strategies described below can benefit all students, regardless of their abilities, as they help ensure increased access to the education experience in the middle grades classroom.

Strategies to Support D/HH Young Adolescents

For D/HH students, many of the more common and traditional approaches to curriculum and the learning environment for young adolescents are effective (Knoors & Marschark, 2014; Scheetz, 2012). Yet, this is often not enough and requires teachers to consider classroom layout, curricular materials, class requirements, performance-based learning and assessments, teaching style, and learning opportunities outside of the regular classroom (e.g., field trips, recess, speakers, plays, assemblies in the auditorium, sporting events) in light of D/HH young adolescents’ unique needs (Knoors & Marschark, 2014; Martins & Gaudiot, 2012). Teachers need to create an educational environment that is visually accessible and welcoming for D/HH students.

Esera (2008) explains in her study of students ages 13-18 that “for education to be successful for deaf students, the learning environment and curriculum is required to be genuinely reflective of, and responsive to, a student’s specific cultural background” (p. 36). As students need to hear or understand what is being said in a classroom to maximize learning opportunities, teachers must use strategies that enable all students access to learning. Limited access to curriculum and fewer opportunities to learn content are two main reasons why there is greater underachievement of D/HH students as compared to their hearing peers (Qi & Mitchell, 2011).

When considering the needs of D/HH students, teachers must be mindful that many of students’ needs require visual learning strategies. Visual learning is “the assimilation of information from visual formats” (Raiyn, 2016, p. 115). Through visual learning opportunities, students’ understanding of information gained through classroom learning experiences is deepened and enhanced (Raiyn, 2016). Visual formats can include: pictures, charts, graphic organizers, videos/movies, simulations, graphs, cartoons, coloring books, slideshows/PowerPoint presentations, posters, games, and manipulatives (Rodger et al., 2009). Teachers of D/HH students need to ensure that their pedagogical practice is visual based and includes consideration of their bodies, environments, and approaches and in doing so can increase D/HH students’ access to curriculum, provide equitable learning opportunities, and support learning needs (Easterbrooks, 2008).

Visual Bodies

Mrs. Wenzel is planning a new unit on the Oregon Trail for the 26 students in her class, two of whom use a sign language interpreter. She is mindful of the different communication access in her classroom, and she wants to make sure all the students are successful in learning about life on the trail. She knows that she needs to prepare a list of vocabulary words for the interpreter and does so. On the day of the lesson, Mrs. Wenzel, with her back to the class, writes on the board details about the journey and explains while writing the route from Independence, Missouri to The Dalles, Oregon. She turns around to the class and notices that Megan, a student relying on the interpreter, seems confused. What can Mrs. Wenzel do to increase Megan’s opportunities for success? We recommend that Mrs. Wenzel makes sure all communication is clear by repeating the statements while facing the class, asking a student to repeat what was just said, or asking a clarification question. Also, provide the student with teacher notes before the class to help the student stay on task as much as possible. Providing notes to all students will allow students to refer to notes during a lecture, see what is coming up next, and allow students to add additional comments on the teacher-created notes to help increase or extend their understanding of the current topic.

Our bodies occupy the visual space (Crossley, 1995). This means that when students are learning from teachers, their bodies are listening, sometimes rapt with attention, sometimes not, but always visible. Teachers’ bodies are the same way. A teacher’s positionality can have an impact on students’ learning. For example, leaning too closely to students may cause students to feel uncomfortable and could encourage students to stop an undesirable behavior, which can be effective in classroom management. However, if a teacher positions themselves too far from students, some students make take advantage of the teacher’s lack of proximity to disengage from learning or interrupt the learning of others. Intentional use of one’s body can increase learning opportunities for all students though some specific practices aimed to support D/HH students include:

• Mindful communication access.  (Knoors & Marschark, 2014). Pause speaking when writing on the whiteboard or smartboard and until facing the audience. While lip-reading may not be effective for some D/HH students, facial expressions can fill in clues.
• Pre-plan presentations.  Having PowerPoint or multimedia presentations prepared, or using a document camera, allows teachers to face the class when discussing presented information. Avoid writing on a board, which can put a teacher’s back to the class, force a student to have to watch an interpreter, and potentially miss information, which may hinder their ability to focus and learn.
• Look at students when making a point.  Eye contact is imperative for visual learners. Have students raise hands and engage in eye contact before speaking. Teachers should point at the student who is speaking to help the D/HH students find the speaker in time before interactions begin.
• Ensure clarity of communication before moving forward in a lesson.  (Steinbrenner & Watson, 2015). Asking a student, “What did I just say?” requires the student to reiterate what was explained to show their level of understanding. This approach provides feedback to the teacher so they know if the student grasps what was presented. If correct and complete, repeat or paraphrase what the student said so the D/HH student (and other students) can receive reinforcement that their understanding is accurate (Bird, 2015). If additional or different information needs to be shared, the teacher can do so at this time. Repeating what students say is particularly useful if the original speaker speaks softly, mumbles their words, or doesn’t accurately or completely capture the original information presented by the teacher.
• Think before you react.  Non-verbal expressions, including facial responses, can benefit and hinder lessons or learning experiences and can be implicit, especially when emphasizing a point. Many non-verbal responses do not match what one hopes to relay. Take time to think about how non-verbal responses may be perceived by someone observing. This may increase accuracy of what one hopes to portray (Johnson, 2017).

Visual Environments

Mr. Ellis has a classroom of 35 students. He teaches six periods a day and knows that each period has different students with different needs. His health class meets during fourth period and he has one deaf student in the classroom. He wants to be able to interact with all of his students, so he is reconsidering the best way to arrange seating in the classroom. He previously had the class sit two-by-two at tables, but noticed that this is not effective for Haley, as she is unable to turn her head fast enough to lip-read whomever is speaking. Haley does not use an interpreter and depends on the minimal hearing she has with a hearing aid. What can Mr. Ellis do to better support Haley and other students? We suggest that since the classroom is large, Mr. Ellis should put tables together in a U-shape, where students can see each other, and use this set-up for all of his classes. He should encourage students to raise their hands and wait to be called on, stating that “we are a classroom community and must work together to maintain understanding.” These practices do not single out any students and the U-shape seating increases visual access for all students.

The environment is often known as the third teacher (Carter, 2007; Strong-Wilson & Ellis, 2007). The classroom space should be arranged to maximize visual access. There are benefits to learning when teachers plan for the environment and consider students’ varied needs (Martins & Gaudiot, 2012). Guardino & Antia (2012) note, “[t]he physical arrangement and features of the classroom environment, such as seating arrangement, lighting, and organization can influence student behavior and attention to academic tasks” (p. 518). Tsymbal (2010) adds that “total visual access/connectivity in buildings therefore is a key Deaf Space idea” (p. 22). It is important for students to be able to see each other, the teacher, and support staff for language and visual understanding. Strategies to maximize learning for D/HH young adolescents include:

• Consider sight lines . Arrange the classroom in a U-shape, if possible, so D/HH students can have access to as many faces as possible. If seating in clusters, position D/HH students in a corner of the classroom to maximize their vantage point (Dye, Hauser, & Bavelier, 2009, Guardino & Antia, 2012). Talk to D/HH students about their seating preferences and needs.
• Unobstructed views.  Maintain open visual space; avoid placing tall bookcases in the middle of the classroom as partitions or having equipment, like a document camera, block a speaker’s face. Create clean visual lines in the entire classroom. This is important for all classrooms but more so for D/HH students due to their visual needs (Duncanson, 2014; Tsymbal, 2010).
• Appropriate lighting.  Provide ample lighting for visual clarity. Avoid standing in front of windows when speaking and do not stand too close to the smartboard as this causes a shadow making it difficult to “read” the speaker (Guardino & Antia, 2012).
• Maintain appropriate noise levels . Noisy environments can impact students who use their residual hearing; thus, minimize noise. Signal the class for quiet before providing instructions and speak clearly (Crandell & Smaldino, 2000; Guardino & Antia, 2012).
• Organize materials and make all materials accessible . Pre-planning how materials will be introduced, distributed, collected, and made available in the room will help D/HH students predict what they need to do, reduce confusion and wasted time, and increase opportunities to access material (Guardino & Antia, 2012).

Visual Approaches

Mr. Graham is teaching a seventh grade health class, which has 32 students, three of whom are deaf and communicate using spoken English and lip-reading. The class is having a heated discussion and the noise level increases. Mr. Graham wants to gain the class’ attention to redirect the conversation and address misunderstandings. He considers raising his voice over the din and sternly tell the students to quiet down or raising his hand at the same time he is using his voice, but he realizes neither approach will be effective for all students. What should he do? We suggest that Mr. Graham flicker the lights to gain attention and quiet down the room, and wait before speaking so the students can turn their faces in his direction and await further instructions. This would not single out any student, instead, will gain attention from all students.

Teachers must recognize that every child, including D/HH students, is different and may require varied instructional approaches to succeed (Luckner, Bowen, & Carter, 2001). Thus, differentiating instructional strategies to meet the needs of all students, regardless of their hearing ability is essential to ensure equal access and increase educational opportunities. However, as many D/HH students have different degrees of hearing loss and their language use varies based on their backgrounds and circumstances (Scheetz, 2012), planning for, and creating visually rich learning environments, can increase learning opportunities (Luckner, Bowen, & Carter, 2001). “Visual approaches” strategies include:

• Using visual classroom management strategies.  Look students in the eye when explaining. Use visual timers and non-verbal cueing, and provide visual images for schedules, posters with rules, procedures, expectations, and consequences (Luckner, Bowen & Carter, 2001).
• Providing breaks for eye rest.  Many students utilize their hearing, which requires fewer muscles than eyes do for seeing. Eyes can be sensitive to straining, and overuse can lead to concentration fatigue. Allow D/HH students to focus on something other than the teacher for a few minutes and to reorient themselves for better vision stamina (Bess & Hornsby, 2014; Hornsby, Werfel, Camarata, & Bess, 2014; Nagane, 2004).
• Providing copies of instructional notes to students . Requiring D/HH students to write notes causes them to take their eyes off the interpreter or the teacher, which can affect the access to, and input of, information. It is easier for D/HH students to read prepared notes and then watch the teacher during the lesson instead of trying to watch the teacher and take notes simultaneously. When students understand the content, they can follow along better (Owen, Bussien & Callahan-Ferris, 2016).
• Ensuring understanding of assignments, activities, and assessments . Meet with D/HH students when assigning work or an assessment to ensure understanding of the task. Encourage students to repeat back directions or information for clearer understanding. Provide students opportunities to ask questions as they may not know that they can ask questions. Some students may not have developed the awareness or the advocacy skills to ask for what they need, or due to trying to fit in or be “invisible,” students may not ask for clarification (Dostal, Gabriel, & Weir, 2017).
• Providing transcripts or closed captioning (CC) with videos . Even with an interpreter, D/HH students will not get word-for-word access that transcripts can provide as ASL does not translate fully to English, nor vice versa. Providing complete transcripts allows students to access accurate and thorough information presented, if CC is not possible. CC are particularly beneficial for persons watching videos in their non-native language, for children and adults learning to read, and for persons who are D/HH (Gernsbacher, 2015; Stinson et al., 2009).
• Modeling desired behavioral expectations.  Explain expectations in visual ways, repeat expectations frequently, and offer students time to practice desired behaviors to increase opportunities to understand and meet expectations. Students respond more positively and consistently if they understand the reasoning behind each expectation.
• Using visual representations during oral explanations . Use whiteboards, chalkboards, PowerPoints, chart paper, or allow students to refer to tablet or computer screens. This multimodal practice can increase opportunities for understanding and remembering presented information (Dostal, Gabriel, & Weir, 2017).

As students with low incidence disabilities, like D/HH students, are appearing more in general education classrooms, teachers of D/HH students need materials and approaches that can be implemented easily to increase student (and teacher) success. While D/HH students face many challenges in school, particularly as they navigate adolescence and the middle school years (Caskey & Anfara, 2014), teachers can support this unique population by: (a) determining in advance the appropriateness of selected instructional and managerial materials for the classroom, (b) ensuring that students have the skills to take advantage of them, and (c) verifying that they are being used correctly by students (Marschark & Knoors, 2012). While these strategies are effective for D/HH young adolescent students, they promote learning for many young adolescents because they are thoughtful, responsive, visual practices. In collaboration with families and support staff, teachers of D/HH students can create and support learning experiences in mainstream classrooms that encourage and enable all students to be successful.

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Hornsby, B. W., Werfel, K., Camarata, S., & Bess, F. H. (2014). Subjective fatigue in children with hearing loss: Some preliminary findings.  American Journal of Audiology, 23 (1), 129-134.

Israelite, N., Ower, J., & Goldstein, G. (2002). Hard-of-hearing adolescents and identity construction: Influences of school experiences, peers, and teachers.  Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 7 (2), 134-148.

Johnson, J. T. (2017). Performing deafness: Symbolic power as embodied by deaf and hearing preschoolers.  L2 Journal, 9 (2).

Kelman, C. A., & Branco, A.U. (2009). (Meta) Communication strategies in inclusive classes for deaf students.  American Annuals of the Deaf, 4 , 371-381. doi:10.1353/aad.0.0112

Knoors, H., & Marschark, M. (2014).  Teaching deaf learners: Psychological and developmental foundations . New York: Oxford University Press.

Kyzar, K. B., Brady, S. E., Summers, J. A., Haines, S. J., & Turnbull, A. P. (2016). Services and supports, partnership, and family quality of life: Focus on deaf-blindness.  Exceptional Children, 83 (1), 77-91.

Lane, H., Pillard, R. C., & Hedberg, U. (2011).  The people of the eye: Deaf ethnicity and ancestry . New York: Oxford University Press.

Lenihan, S. (2010). Trends and challenges in teacher preparation in deaf education.  The Volta Review, 110 (2), 117.

Luckner, J., Bowen, S., & Carter, K. (2001). Visual teaching strategies for students who are deaf or hard of hearing.  Teaching Exceptional Children, 33 (3), 38-44.

Lukomski, J. L. (2008). Best practices in planning effective instruction for students who are deaf and hard of hearing. In A. Thomas & J. Grimes (Eds.),  Best practices in school psychology  (Vol. V, pp. 1819–1822). Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.

Marschark, M., & Knoors, H. (2012). Educating deaf children: Language, cognition, and learning.  Deafness and Education International, 14 , 137–161.

Marschark, M., Sapere, P., Convertino, C., & Pelz, J. (2008). Learning via direct and mediated instruction by deaf students.  Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 13 (4), 546-561.

Marschark, M., Shaver, D. M., Nagle, K. M., & Newman, L. A. (2015). Predicting the academic achievement of deaf and hard-of-hearing students from individual, household, communication, and educational factors.  Exceptional Children, 81 (3), 350–369.

Marschark, M., Spencer, P. E., Adams, J., & Sapere, P. (2011). Evidence-based practice in educating deaf and hard-of-hearing children: Teaching to their cognitive strengths and needs.  European Journal of Special Needs Education, 26 (1), 3-16.

Martins, L. B., & Gaudiot, D. M. F. (2012). The deaf and the classroom design: A contribution of the built environmental ergonomics for the accessibility.  Work, 41 (Supplement 1), 3663-3668.

Mitchell, R. E., Young, T. A., Bachleda, B., & Karchmer, M. A. (2006). How many people use ASL in the United States? Why estimates need updating.  Sign Language Studies, 6 (3), 306-335.

Muñoz, K., Nelson, L., Goldgewicht, N., & Odell, D. (2011). Early hearing detection and intervention: Diagnostic hearing assessment practices.  American Journal of Audiology, 20 (2), 123-131.

Musyoka, M. M., Gentry, M. A., & Meek, D. R. (2017). Perceptions of teachers’ preparedness to teach deaf and hard of hearing students with additional disabilities: A qualitative case study.  Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities, 29 (5), 827-848.

National Association of the Deaf. (2018).  Community and culture- Frequently asked questions . Retrieved from https://www.nad.org/resources/american-sign-language/community-and-culture-frequently-asked-questions/

Nagane, M. (2004). Relationship of subjective chronic fatigue to academic performance.  Psychological Reports, 95 , 48–52.

National Middle School Association [NMSA]. (2010).  This we believe: Keys to educating young adolescents . Westerville, OH: Author.

Nikolaraizi, M., & Hadjikakou, K. (2006). The role of educational experiences in the development of deaf identity.  Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 11 (4), 477-492.

Obiakor, F. E. (2011). Maximizing access, equity, and inclusion in general and special education.  The Journal of the International Association of Special Education, 12 (1), 10-16.

Owen, A., Bussien, J., & Callahan-Ferris, G. (2016). Supporting individual learners: Working with Deaf learners.  In Exploring children’s learning: 3–11 years  (pp 107-126). New York: NY. Routledge.

Qi, S., & Mitchell, R. E. (2011). Large-scale academic achievement testing of deaf and hard-of-hearing students: Past, present, and future.  Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 17 (1), 1-18.

Raiyn, J. (2016). The role of visual learning in improving students’ high-order thinking skills.  Journal of Education and Practice, 7 (24), 115-121. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1112894.pdf

Rodger, S. H., Hayes, J., Lezin, G., Qin, H., Nelson, D., Tucker, R., Lopez, M., Cooper, S., Dann, W., & Slater, D. (2009).  Engaging middle school teachers and students with Alice in a diverse set of subjects . Proceedings of the 40th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer science education, 41(1), 271-275.

Rieffe, C. (2012). Awareness and regulation of emotions in deaf children.  British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 30 (4), 477-492.

Salter, J. M., Swanwick, R. A., & Pearson, S. E. (2017). Collaborative working practices in inclusive mainstream deaf education settings: Teaching assistant perspectives.  Deafness & Education International, 19 (1), 40-49.

Scheetz, N. A. (2012).  Deaf education in the 21st century: Topics and trends  (pp. 152-162). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Schick, B., Williams, K., & Kupermintz, H. (2005). Look who’s being left behind: Educational interpreters and access to education for deaf and hard-of-hearing students.  Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 11 (1), 3-20.

Schleicher, A. (2014).  Equity, excellence and inclusiveness in education: Policy lessons from around the world , International Summit on the Teaching Profession, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264214033-en.

Steinbrenner, J. R. D., & Watson, L. R. (2015). Student engagement in the classroom: The impact of classroom, teacher, and student factors.  Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 45 (8), 2392-2410.

Stinson, M. S., Elliot, L. B., Kelly, R. R., & Liu, Y. (2009). Deaf and hard-of-hearing students’ memory of lectures with speech-to-text and interpreting/note taking services.  The Journal of Special Education, 43 (1), 52-64.

Stinson, M. S., & Whitmire, K. A. (2000). Adolescents who are deaf or hard of hearing: A communication perspective on educational placement.  Topics in Language Disorders, 20 (2), 58-72.

Strong-Wilson, T., & Ellis, J. (2007). Children and place: Reggio Emilia’s environment as third teacher.  Theory into Practice, 46 (1), 40-47.

Szymanski, C., Lutz, L., Shahan, C., & Gala, N. (2013).  Critical needs of students who are D/HH: A public input summary . Washington, DC: Gallaudet University, Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED543356.pdf

Tsymbal, K. A. (2010).  Deaf space and the visual world—buildings that speak: An elementary school for the deaf . (Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, Maryland, USA). Available from Digital Depository of the University of Maryland. University of Maryland, College Park.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO]. (2017).  A guide for ensuring inclusion and equity in education . Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002482/248254e.pdf

U.S. Department of Education. (2015).  37th annual report to congress on the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2015 . Washington, DC: Office of Special Education Programs.

Vakos, P. (2011).  Why the blank stare? Strategies for visual learner . Pearson Education, Inc. New York City: New York. Retrieved from http://www.phschool.com/eteach/social_studies/2003_05/essay.html

Valli, C., & Lucas, C. (2000).  Linguistics of American sign language: An introduction . Washington, D. C.: Gallaudet University Press.

Webb, M. Y., Lederberg, A. R., Branum-Martin, L., & McDonald, C. (2015). Evaluating the structure of early English literacy skills in deaf and hard-of-hearing children.  Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 20 (4), 343-355.

Wiley, S., Parnell, L., & Belhorn, T. (2016). Promoting early identification and intervention for children who are deaf/hard of hearing, children with vision impairment, and children with deaf-blind conditions.  Journal of Early Hearing Detection and Intervention, 1 (1), 26-33.

Wiley, S. (2013). Understanding the needs of children who are deaf/hard of hearing plus.  Sound foundation through early amplification . Retrieved from https://www.phonakpro.com/content/dam/phonakpro/gc_hq/en/events/2013/sound_foundation_chicago/chapter_16-sound_foundation_2013.pdf

Annotated Resources

Make a Difference Handbook.  This handbook is designed for teachers and includes recommendations on how to support D/HH students including communication issues, using an interpreter, and set up of classrooms. While primarily geared for university faculty, there are tips and strategies beneficial for D/HH middle school students. https://www.umaryland.edu/media/umb/oaa/campus-life/ disability-services-/documents/Tips-for-Teaching-Students-Who-Are-Deaf-or-Hard-of-Hearing.pdf

Gallaudet University’s Laurent Clerc Center.  This website offers a variety of resources to support the needs of D/HH students including publications, tips for shared reading, webinars, workshops, and an online network. One example includes a video outlining the 15 principles to guide parents and teachers in promoting literacy development for children who are D/HH. http://www3.gallaudet.edu/clerc-center/our-resources.html

The IRIS Center.  While not geared specifically to D/HH education, it is a valuable resource for working with students with unique needs. Topics include accommodations, differentiated instruction, learning strategies, transition, and collaboration, and include evidence-based practice summaries, films, and advice on how to implement specific strategies. https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/iris-resource-locator/

Canadian Hearing Society.  This guide offers ideas for classroom accessibility for students who are deaf and hard of hearing. It includes a description of the D/HH student population as well as the five building block framework for language accessibility to help those supporting D/HH students in a school setting. Included are strategies for (1) building the environment, (2) access to information, (3) language access, (4) technology, (5) education and training. https://www.chs.ca/sites/default/files/mhg_images /CHS003_AccessibilityGuide_EN_APPROVED.PDF

University of Minnesota’s Deaf Education Resources.  This resource for working with D/HH students provides information language, reading, assessment, transition, technology and progress monitoring to support classroom teachers. There are webinars, articles, manuals, and videos that can support D/HH teachers. The website constantly changes and adds the most updated resources possible. http://www.cehd.umn.edu/DHH-Resources/

Alicia Wenzel  is an associate professor of education specializing in curriculum, instruction, and assessment at Western Oregon University. Her research focuses on curriculum, assessment, and middle level education as well as supporting in-service novice teachers across the PK-12 continuum.   [email protected]

Patrick Graham  is an assistant professor in D/HH education at Western Oregon University. His interests focus on educational equity, sociocultural contexts in education, and sociological perspectives of schooling. He is also interested in the impact of language deprivation in D/HH children.   [email protected]

Wenzel, A. & Graham, P. (2019). Research summary: Equity, access, and inclusiveness: Supporting deaf and hard-of-hearing young adolescents in the mainstreamed middle school classroom. Retrieved from http://www.amle.org/Publications/ResearchSummary/TabId/622/ artmid/2112/articleid/1100/Equity-Access-and-Inclusiveness-Supporting -Deaf-and-Hard-of-Hearing-Young-Adolescents-in-the-Mainstreamed-Middle-School-Classroom.aspx

Published November 2019.

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Research in Deaf Education: Contexts, Challenges, and Considerations

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Hannah Dostal, Research in Deaf Education: Contexts, Challenges, and Considerations, The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education , Volume 23, Issue 2, April 2018, Pages 183–184, https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enx053

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Research in Deaf Education: Contexts, challenges, and considerations may mark a turning point in the rigor and relevance of research in deaf education. This edited volume makes a unique contribution to existing literature in the field of deaf education both as a comprehensive resource for thoughtful and balanced approaches to research design and implementation, and as a project designed to exemplify the principles of “rigor and relevance”. The book begins with foundational chapters that describe the history, contexts, and unique considerations for research in deaf education, including an overview of the history (Chapter 1), methods (Chapter 2), and demographics (Chapter 5); as well as the roles of researcher positionality (Chapter 3) and the involvement of the deaf community (Chapter 4) in the research endeavor. These introductory chapters are followed by 11 chapters focused on specific methods or approaches to research in deaf education, and bookended by an introduction and conclusion written by the editors. Brief and well-argued, the introduction and conclusion create a compelling case for the profound potential of a generation of diverse, well-informed researchers in deaf education—a generation that will come to rely on this text as their starting point.

The lineup of contributing authors is diverse with respect to region, gender, culture, language, perspective, and experience in the field. Yet, all of the nearly 30 contributing authors are currently active, eminent researchers with hard-earned track records for generating meaningful knowledge through research efforts. This is a strong indication that the editors’ decision to curate and showcase multiple perspectives has and can serve as a foundational design principle within an ethic of “rigor and relevance”. Each author not only offers clear, comprehensive and well-edited insights to guide similarly impactful work; they also provide examples and evidence that it can be done despite the traditional challenges of research in the field. Future editions of this text could include chapters that examine more qualtiative, interpretive approaches to deaf education research—highlighting those that foreground Deaf epistemologies and Deaf studies as theoretical lenses and methodological tools. Similarly, a future edition might include a discussion of techniques for statistical analysis with small sets of heterogenous data.

In the editors’ introduction, Cawthon and Garberoglio note that the ultimate goal for the volume is to “improve the rigor, relevance and generalizability of research in deaf education” (p. x). Though generalizability is at least an implied goal of most education research, I would argue that a larger, more powerful goal is addressed by both the design and contents of this text. Where generalizability is either impossible because of sample sizes, or unhelpful given the heterogenous nature of a population, researchers increasingly consider “fruitfulness” (Potter & Wetherell, 1987; Tracy 1995) as a criterion for quality—especially within qualitative research paradigms. Tracy (1995) suggests that fruitful qualitative research is “intellectually implicative for the scholarly community. It should suggest productive ways to reframe old issues, create links between previously unrelated issues, and raise new questions that are interesting and merit attention” (p. 210). In other words, the practical and intellectual impact of findings is not limited to the extent to which they predict or could be extended to other cases (generalizability), but the extent to which they influence understandings, policies and practices that improve outcomes in many cases. This concept of fruitfulness—over and above generalizability—more accurately captures the ultimate goal of the research endeavors outlined in this edited volume. As the editors and many contributors note, researching with and about a small, heterogenous population, often challenges the assumptions required for generalizability. As Enns, Antia, Guardino, and Cannon point out across chapters focused on case studies and single-subject designs, sometimes an emphasis on the particular, rather than the general, is what leads to the most powerful and far-reaching insights for the field and beyond.

This text as a whole takes the theoretical and methodological challenges of researching a small, heterogeneous and socially marginalized population as its starting point by presenting both the context to understand the uniqueness of the field and the considerations required to work within and beyond theoretical and methodological challenges. Rather than simply reiterating, skirting or minimizing the challenges of ethical and rigorous research in this context, the editors address them head on by including chapters aimed at developing readers’ understanding of the population (Chapters 2, 3, and 4) and chapters that describe how to create the conditions for relevant research by developing American Sign Language (ASL) measures, translating ASL for research purposes, and synthesizing existing research (Chapters 7, 8–15).

As the editors note in their introduction, research in deaf education has enormous potential to fuel a mutually beneficial exchange with education research in general; yet the parallels, connections and disconnections are not yet well articulated to or known among many journal editors, grantmakers or cross-disciplinary collaborators. To this end, both scholars and consumers of education research in deaf education will benefit from the intentional framing of deaf education within the broader field of education research and education research methodologies, which reoccurs across all chapters. This framing and the collection of contributed chapters representing diverse perspectives and approaches is unique in the field.

This volume meets its own criteria of rigor and relevance by virtue of its carefully curated collection of perspectives, its transparent discussion of challenges and its comprehensive description of the contexts of research in deaf education. Both in design and in action, Cawthon and Gaberoglio’s Research in Deaf Education provides resources to design and implement rigorous relevant and fruitful research in deaf education.

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The daily struggles that deaf people face in our society

Readers respond to journalist and campaigner Liam O’Dell’s decision to stop saying sorry for his deafness

A big thank you to Liam O’Dell for confronting, indeed challenging, the need for deaf people to feel obliged to apologise for their disability ( I’m done saying sorry for being deaf – I want to change how society treats people like me, 25 November ). In my case, apology has given way to abject submission. I no longer go to restaurants and pubs, and try to avoid big social events. I have become tired of being among groups of people where I have no idea what is being said, yet giving the opposite impression by nodding my head in approval or, worse still, laughing in unison. In these situations, my usual trick in the past has been to zone in on an unfortunate individual sitting next to me and boring them senseless with conversation of my choosing.

The biggest impact is the loss of confidence. I dread the prospect of having to communicate meaningfully with someone wearing a face mask or sitting behind a glass screen. This scenario usually concludes with the unedifying image of me contorting myself to speak through the aperture at the base of the screen. Telephone conversations with strangers are nightmarish, with many of them ending prematurely. I could go on, but this article has sparked a spirit of resistance to my compliance. Frank Cleary Dublin, Ireland

Liam O’Dell describes some of the daily struggles that deaf people experience. Most of the public believe the myth that hearing aids or implants replace normal hearing. Also, we have to battle the myth that lipreading replaces normal hearing.

Research with deaf users shows that technology distorts noises: adults may have an especially hard time relearning how to interpret sounds. It also depends on the level of spoken language that the deaf child has managed to acquire, despite having to learn to make sense of sounds that are only ever partial, thus may only hear vowel sounds or miss consonants. Further research found that “reading” lips as a supplementary to the sound gaps only gives approximately 30% of information since most sounds are within the mouth. Even those words that are visible can be confusing. It is like guessing ongoing crosswords without pen and paper every day. For example, in the phrase “the cat sat on the mat” only the sounds, th, o and m are visible on the lips. And b, m and p all look the same, as in bat, mat, pat.

Deaf EXperience is a deaf-led organisation that enables deaf children and young people to understand their deafness and supports their wellbeing, since most attend mainstream education without meeting deaf peers or having deaf cultural input. This means that most deaf children have not learned our value to society. It is highly stressful doing the “virtual crossword” all the time. Communication is two-way. There needs to be empathy and respect for our being deaf. Jill Jones Chair, Deaf EXperience

I read Liam O’Dell’s article with interest, as I have had similar experiences. I started to use hearing aids in my late 20s after needing them for years. Liam references his limited British Sign Language (BSL) skills – but one of the shocking things is how hard it is for deaf people, their families and friends to access lessons. Courses are incredibly expensive, and while some (not enough) are funded for parents of deaf children, there is no funding for deaf adults to learn BSL.

The small amount I’ve learned has had a real impact on my life. I can follow a play at the theatre more easily, I can follow Zoom conferences better – but I can’t afford the lessons I would need to become fluent enough to use it.

BSL is one of the official languages of the British Isles and there needs to be funded support in place for everyone who wants to learn it – whether for themselves, friends, or work. It also has significant advantages. Many people struggle with ordering food and drink, or holding conversations, in loud environments – wouldn’t it often be easier if more of us just spoke BSL? Jamie Hale London

I really identify with Liam O’Dell’s experience of being unsure of his hearing identity and have been through the process of shaking off my responsibility for being disabled. I was born moderately hard of hearing. However, I was six and at a state primary school by the time I received my NHS hearing aids. Beyond being made to sit at the front of the class, no other accommodation was made for my hearing loss. I was just left to muddle through socially and academically. I believe schools are much more supportive of children with hearing loss these days, but it’s hard to go from no support at all to confidently asserting yourself as a hard of hearing person.

Being a teenager with the impairment of an old person was socially very hard. On the occasions that I did throw myself into the social whirl, I found the easiest way to move on from disjointed conversations caused by mishearing words was to apologise, even if the outcome was actually quite funny. I always took the blame for not correctly hearing what someone said, as suggesting they could have spoken more clearly or looked at me while speaking seemed impolite.

When applying for jobs, I felt neither able-bodied or disabled due to the huge gulf medically and socially between being deaf and hard of hearing. My personal acceptance of my disability came about during a bad pandemic online interview. I failed to hear most of the questions. My imposter syndrome had prevented me from raising my hearing loss in advance. I was over 40 and finally I allowed myself to be seen as disabled. In doing so, I realised I didn’t need to apologise for being who I am. Charlie Chamberlain Norwich

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New Directions to Deaf Education

WE ARE NOW ACCEPTING ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS FOR THE 2023 ISSUE OF ODYSSEY ON THE TOPIC OF “ ACCESS AND EQUITY IN DEAF EDUCATION .”

• National Deaf Education Center
• Private: Educational Resources
• ODYSSEY: New Directions in Deaf Education

Diversity and Fostering Inclusive Learning

The 2020 issue of  Odyssey , compiled prior to the COVID 19 pandemic and the worldwide anti-racist protest movement, focuses on how schools, professionals, and families are working together to create and foster inclusive environments for all deaf and hard of hearing children.

This issue looks at how families and professionals in deaf education programs are responding to these needs, how they are ensuring the inclusion of social justice and social-emotional growth along with high academic expectations for deaf and hard of hearing children, the strategies they used, the challenges they faced, and the outcomes they achieved in their quest to enhance inclusion and equity for their children or students.

Seventeen articles, written by a total of 32 professional and parent authors, focus on:

• Deaf, Spanish-speaking family’s story of instilling cultural identity and pride in their children through fluency in multiple languages
• Fostering multilingual development through family language planning
• Gender inclusion in the Clerc Center’s demonstration schools
• Making the arts accessible for children with multiple disabilities
• Military family’s story of diagnosis and supports for two deaf sons who have cochlear implants
• Strategies for increasing social awareness in children on the autism spectrum
• Addressing personal and cultural connections within evidence-based reading instruction
• Family’s journey from diagnosis to appropriate educational environment for their daughter who is deaf-blind with disabilities
• How shared cultural connections help students analyze literature (includes an example of anti-bias education through reading a young adult novel)
• Importance of Deaf Community Cultural Wealth for students with disabilities
• Utilizing Universal Design for Learning with deaf and hard of hearing students
• Hard truths about suspension and social justice in a deaf school
• Retired principal returning to teaching at the university level offers advice to new teachers
• Integrating the principles of social justice into a teacher preparation program
• Role of formative assessment in closing achievement gaps in diverse classrooms
• Perspectives from three inclusive excellence ambassadors on fostering equity and inclusion at the Clerc Center and Gallaudet University
• How embracing diversity and inclusion in our schools empowers everyone

We invite you to share your own stories with us on Twitter and Facebook with the hashtags of #ClercCenter and #DeafEd or to reach out to us at [email protected]  with your thoughts.

• Grandparents, Parents, Children—and Four Languages: A Deaf Family's Story By Norma Morán and Franklin C. Torres
• Family Language Planning with Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children: Fostering Multilingual Development By Christi Batamula, Bobbie Jo Kite Herbold, and Julie Mitchiner
• Gender Inclusion in the Clerc Center's Demonstration Schools By Stephen Farias
• Making Arts Education Accessible for Deaf Children with Multiple Disabilities: A Partnership By Michelle A. Veyvoda and Jodi L. Falk
• In the U.S. Military: Gleaning Support for Our Deaf Sons By LaShawna Sims
• Increasing Social Awareness for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children on the Autism Spectrum: Innovative Strategies By Patrick Graham, Raschelle Neild, and Aaron Shield

About the Clerc Center

The Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center at Gallaudet University is a federally funded center with exemplary elementary and secondary education programs for deaf and hard of hearing students and is tasked with developing and disseminating innovative curricula, instructional techniques, and products nationwide while providing information, training, and technical assistance for parents and professionals to meet the needs of deaf and hard of hearing students from birth to age 21.

800 Florida Avenue, NE Washington, DC 20002 USA

This site was supported by federal funding. Publication of this material shall not imply approval or acceptance by the U.S. Department of Education of the findings, conclusions, or recommendations herein. Gallaudet University is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, religion, age, hearing status, disability, covered veteran status, marital status, personal appearance, sexual orientation, family responsibilities, matriculation, political affiliation, source of income, place of business or residence, pregnancy, childbirth, or any other unlawful basis.

Seeking Submissions for the 2023 Issue of Odyssey

Theme: access and equity in deaf education.

The next issue of  Odyssey  will focus on how deaf and hard of hearing students are being provided with equitable access to education, ensuring they have the resources and services they need to fully participate and succeed in both school and the community—as young children, as students, and, later, as adults.

Often the concept of “access” is defined by experts or regular users of a given system instead of according to the experiences and expectations of exceptional users who engage with the system. Who defines accessibility? The deaf or hard of hearing child or the people surrounding that child? In addition to determining what access means and how it will be provided, accessibility by itself may not be enough. Abundance of experience and ease of use are also important, especially in interactions involving language and socialization. Full and comfortable participation may be the ultimate measure of equitable access.

We want to know how families and educators are providing equitable access and enabling full participation for their deaf and hard of hearing children or students not only through technology but also through programming, activities, and strategies that promote maximum opportunities for learning and interaction:

• Which assistive tools and online technologies have been shown to support academic success and social-emotional development? How can we measure the efficacy of such tools?
• What unique strategies help create inclusive environments and promote an abundance of accessible and interactive language for deaf and hard of hearing children in their families and communities as well as in schools?
• How do we involve deaf and hard of hearing students in determining what access they need? How do we ensure they continue to receive both academic and social-emotional support? 
• What have we learned from our own deaf and hard of hearing children and students, especially about what works best for them? How have we supported their advocacy and self-determination? 

The Clerc Center is particularly interested in articles focused on serving students who are deaf or hard of hearing from traditionally underserved groups, including those students who are lower achieving academically, who come from families that speak a language other than English in the home, who are members of diverse racial or cultural groups, who are from rural areas, and/or who are deafdisabled.

Please e-mail your ideas to  [email protected] . We will begin accepting submissions on June 13, 2022, and continue until December 2, 2022, or until the magazine reaches capacity. Contact us at any time with questions or to discuss your ideas.

Family Immersion Programs and Deaf Camps

This form is to collect information about family immersion programs and camps for deaf and hard of hearing children. Fill out this form to have your camp or program added to our comprehensive list, organized by state.

• Family Immersion Program

Family Immersion Programs

• What is the name of the program?
• In which state is the program located?
• In which town or city is the program located?
• How long is it?
• What are the program dates for 2024?
• You can learn sign language
• You can meet other families
• You can meet Deaf community members
• Deaf and hard of hearing children have the opportunity to interact with each other
• What is the cost of the program?
• What is the program website or contact information?
• Please upload a flier for your program (optional). Max. file size: 128 MB.
• Is there anything else you would like to add about your family immersion program? (optional)
• Is your program also a camp for deaf and hard of hearing children?
• What is the name of the camp?
• In which state is the camp located?
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In some classrooms in Senegal, deaf and hard-of-hearing students now study alongside everyone else

A new approach in Senegal is mixing a small number of hard-of-hearing students into public classrooms

PIKINE, Senegal -- Mouhamed Sall stepped to the chalkboard with a glance and quick question in sign language to an assistant. Then he solved the exercise to the silent approval of his classmates, who waved their hands in a display of appreciation.

Sall and three other students are part of a new approach in a small number of schools in Senegal that seat those who are deaf and hard of hearing with the rest of the class.

Some classmates at the sun-washed Apix Guinaw Rails Sud school in a suburb of the capital, Dakar, have embraced the chance to learn sign language in the months since Sall arrived. The class is lively and cheeky: “No teachers allowed in this room,” graffiti scrawled above the chalkboard says.

“I have no problem communicating with some colleagues I went to primary school with,” Sall said as his mother spoke. “The new colleagues don’t know sign language but we still play together."

“We’ve been friends, so it was easy to learn sign language,” said classmate Salane Senghor, who also knew Sall in primary school. New classmates were curious, looking to the assistant to find out what he was saying.

The United Nations children's agency says about 60% of children with disabilities in Senegal are not going to school. But the government lacks comprehensive data on the issue and counts only children who are formally registered as having a disability.

“We’re looking for progress from the government to ensure every child, regardless of ability, has the opportunity to learn," said Sara Poehlman with UNICEF Senegal.

Senegal lacks a national strategy for inclusive education, but it is developing one. Recent political instability in the West African nation has hindered progress.

The challenges are compounded by a stigma that some in Senegal associate with disabilities. Some parents hide their children and prevent them from participating in society.

But attitudes are changing. In 2021, Senegal’s football team for deaf and hard of hearing players won the first African football championship for such teams and played in the world championship, to the congratulations of Senegal's president. During the recent election , the National Association for the Promotion of the Deaf in Senegal and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems organized a workshop to teach hard-of-hearing voters over 100 election-related terms in sign language.

Now there's more visibility in classrooms.

The organization Humanity and Inclusion last year began partnering with Senegal’s education ministry for mixed classes in four public secondary schools with inclusive education practices. Apix is one of them. Humanity and Inclusion funds the hiring of assistants who can communicate in sign language.

“We see that all children are on an equal footing, and that’s why we make an inclusive class or school by harmonizing with the hearing pupils,” said Papa Amadou, one assistant.

Sall is receiving education free of charge, a big advantage in a part of the world where school fees can be a constant source of stress for parents.

Until now, Senegal has had mostly specialized schools for children with disabilities, but they are often private and expensive.

Sall's mother, Khadija Koundio, at first paid about $17 every month for him to attend an activity center for children with learning challenges in their neighborhood. Then he was able to enter primary school with the support of a similar Humanity and Inclusion program created several years ago in a small number of schools for younger students.

Omar Diop, head supervisor at Apix, praised the new secondary school program but said challenges continue.

“It’s their first year for the teachers, so that poses a problem because the children come with a much higher level of sign language,” Diop said.

Mamadou Konte, the Apix school director, emphasized the need for more teacher training. “We’ve seen success at our school, but this model needs to be replicated nationwide,” Konte added.

Challenges remain for students and families, too. Koundio, president of the parents’ association for the school's deaf and hard-of-hearing students, said some of her son’s classmates live farther away and struggle with the cost of commuting.

Poehlman with UNICEF highlighted government initiatives like the Carte de l’Égalité, which provides financial assistance to families so children can access specialized schools, but she stressed the importance of programs implemented in public schools.

Jandira Monteiro with Humanity and Inclusion urged collaboration between Senegal's ministries of health and education to ensure holistic support for children with disabilities.

Sall said he feels accepted by his peers. The teachers at Apix commend him on his intelligence and his artistic talents in crafting bright models of houses and traditional boats called pirogues.

His mother wants him to pursue his passions, including art.

“One day, when I’m gone, he’ll have enough to support himself,” she said.

Ndeye Sene Mbengue in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.

The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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In some classrooms in Senegal, deaf and hard-of-hearing students now study alongside everyone else

Mouhamed Sall, who is deaf, attends class at the Guinaw Rail Sud public high school in Pikine, Senegal, Monday, March 18, 2024. Sall and three other students are part of a new approach in a small number of schools in Senegal that seat those who are deaf and hard of hearing with the rest of the class. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

Mouhamed Sall, who is deaf, sits on the steps of the Guinaw Rail Sud public high school in Pikine, Senegal, Monday, March 18, 2024. Sall and three other students are part of a new approach in a small number of schools in Senegal that seat those who are deaf and hard of hearing with the rest of the class. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

Mouhamed Sall, who is deaf, communicates by sign with his classmates at the Guinaw Rail Sud public high school in Pikine, Senegal, Monday, March 18, 2024. Sall and three other students are part of a new approach in a small number of schools in Senegal that seat those who are deaf and hard of hearing with the rest of the class. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

Mouhamed Sall, who is deaf, communicates using sign language at the Guinaw Rail Sud public high school in Pikine, Senegal, Monday, March 18, 2024. Sall and three other students are part of a new approach in a small number of schools in Senegal that seat those who are deaf and hard of hearing with the rest of the class. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

Mouhamed Sall, who is deaf, communicates by sign with his mother Khadiatou Koundio as he arrives home from school in Pikine, Senegal, Monday, March 18, 2024. Sall and three other students are part of a new approach in a small number of schools in Senegal that seat those who are deaf and hard of hearing with the rest of the class. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

Mouhamed Sall, who is deaf, and known for his talent for drawing and manual activities, paints a small house he built in Pikine, Senegal, Monday, March 18, 2024. Sall and three other students are part of a new approach in a small number of schools in Senegal that seat those who are deaf and hard of hearing with the rest of the class. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

Mouhamed Sall, who is deaf, walks home after school in Pikine, Senegal, Monday, March 18, 2024. Sall and three other students are part of a new approach in a small number of schools in Senegal that seat those who are deaf and hard of hearing with the rest of the class. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

• Copy Link copied

PIKINE, Senegal (AP) — Mouhamed Sall stepped to the chalkboard with a glance and quick question in sign language to an assistant. Then he solved the exercise to the silent approval of his classmates, who waved their hands in a display of appreciation.

Sall and three other students are part of a new approach in a small number of schools in Senegal that seat those who are deaf and hard of hearing with the rest of the class.

Some classmates at the sun-washed Apix Guinaw Rails Sud school in a suburb of the capital, Dakar, have embraced the chance to learn sign language in the months since Sall arrived. The class is lively and cheeky: “No teachers allowed in this room,” graffiti scrawled above the chalkboard says.

“I have no problem communicating with some colleagues I went to primary school with,” Sall said as his mother spoke. “The new colleagues don’t know sign language but we still play together.”

“We’ve been friends, so it was easy to learn sign language,” said classmate Salane Senghor, who also knew Sall in primary school. New classmates were curious, looking to the assistant to find out what he was saying.

The United Nations children’s agency says about 60% of children with disabilities in Senegal are not going to school. But the government lacks comprehensive data on the issue and counts only children who are formally registered as having a disability.

“We’re looking for progress from the government to ensure every child, regardless of ability, has the opportunity to learn,” said Sara Poehlman with UNICEF Senegal.

Senegal lacks a national strategy for inclusive education, but it is developing one. Recent political instability in the West African nation has hindered progress.

The challenges are compounded by a stigma that some in Senegal associate with disabilities. Some parents hide their children and prevent them from participating in society.

But attitudes are changing. In 2021, Senegal’s football team for deaf and hard of hearing players won the first African football championship for such teams and played in the world championship, to the congratulations of Senegal’s president. During the recent election, the National Association for the Promotion of the Deaf in Senegal and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems organized a workshop to teach hard-of-hearing voters over 100 election-related terms in sign language.

Now there’s more visibility in classrooms.

The organization Humanity and Inclusion last year began partnering with Senegal’s education ministry for mixed classes in four public secondary schools with inclusive education practices. Apix is one of them. Humanity and Inclusion funds the hiring of assistants who can communicate in sign language.

“We see that all children are on an equal footing, and that’s why we make an inclusive class or school by harmonizing with the hearing pupils,” said Papa Amadou, one assistant.

Sall is receiving education free of charge, a big advantage in a part of the world where school fees can be a constant source of stress for parents.

Until now, Senegal has had mostly specialized schools for children with disabilities, but they are often private and expensive.

Sall’s mother, Khadija Koundio, at first paid about $17 every month for him to attend an activity center for children with learning challenges in their neighborhood. Then he was able to enter primary school with the support of a similar Humanity and Inclusion program created several years ago in a small number of schools for younger students.

Omar Diop, head supervisor at Apix, praised the new secondary school program but said challenges continue.

“It’s their first year for the teachers, so that poses a problem because the children come with a much higher level of sign language,” Diop said.

Mamadou Konte, the Apix school director, emphasized the need for more teacher training. “We’ve seen success at our school, but this model needs to be replicated nationwide,” Konte added.

Mouhamed Sall, who is deaf, communicates using sign language at the Guinaw Rail Sud public high school in Pikine, Senegal, Monday, March 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

Challenges remain for students and families, too. Koundio, president of the parents’ association for the school’s deaf and hard-of-hearing students, said some of her son’s classmates live farther away and struggle with the cost of commuting.

Poehlman with UNICEF highlighted government initiatives like the Carte de l’Égalité, which provides financial assistance to families so children can access specialized schools, but she stressed the importance of programs implemented in public schools.

Jandira Monteiro with Humanity and Inclusion urged collaboration between Senegal’s ministries of health and education to ensure holistic support for children with disabilities.

Sall said he feels accepted by his peers. The teachers at Apix commend him on his intelligence and his artistic talents in crafting bright models of houses and traditional boats called pirogues.

His mother wants him to pursue his passions, including art.

“One day, when I’m gone, he’ll have enough to support himself,” she said.

Ndeye Sene Mbengue in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.

The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

America has legislated itself into competing red, blue versions of education

American states passed a blizzard of education laws and policies over the past six years that aim to reshape how K-12 schools and colleges teach and present issues of race, sex and gender to the majority of the nation’s students — with instruction differing sharply by states’ political leanings, according to a Washington Post analysis .

See which states are restricting, requiring education on race and sex

Three-fourths of the nation’s school-aged students are now educated under state-level measures that either require more teaching on issues like race, racism, history, sex and gender, or which sharply limit or fully forbid such lessons, according to a sweeping Post review of thousands of state laws, gubernatorial directives and state school board policies. The restrictive laws alone affect almost half of all Americans aged 5 to 19.

How The Post is tracking education bills

Since 2017, 38 states have adopted 114 such laws, rules or orders, The Post found. The majority of policies are restrictive in nature: 66 percent circumscribe or ban lessons and discussions on some of society’s most sensitive topics, while 34 percent require or expand them. In one example, a 2023 Kentucky law forbids lessons on human sexuality before fifth grade and outlaws all instruction “exploring gender identity.” On the other hand, a 2021 Rhode Island law requires that all students learn “African Heritage and History” before high school graduation.

The Post included in its analysis only measures that could directly affect what students learn. Thus, 100 of the laws in The Post’s database apply only to K-12 campuses, where states have much greater power to shape curriculums. At public institutions of higher education — where courts have held that the First Amendment protects professors’ right to teach what they want — the laws instead target programs like student or faculty trainings or welcome sessions.

Tell The Post: How are education laws, restrictions affecting your school?

The divide is sharply partisan. The vast majority of restrictive laws and policies, close to 9o percent, were enacted in states that voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, The Post found. Meanwhile, almost 80 percent of expansive laws and policies were enacted in states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

The explosion of laws regulating school curriculums is unprecedented in U.S. history for its volume and scope, said Jonathan Zimmerman, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies education history and policy. Controversy and debate over classroom lessons is nothing new, Zimmermann said, but states have never before stepped in so aggressively to set rules for local schools. School districts have traditionally had wide latitude to shape their lessons.

He said it remains an open question whether all laws will translate to curriculum changes, predicting some schools and teachers may refuse to alter their pedagogy. Still, a nationally representative study from the Rand Corp. released this year found that 65 percent of K-12 teachers report they are limiting instruction on “political and social issues.”

“What the laws show is that we have extremely significant differences over how we imagine America,” Zimmerman said. “State legislatures have now used the power of law to try to inscribe one view, and to prevent another. And so we’re deeply divided in America.”

In practice, these divisions mean that what a child learns about, say, the role slavery played in the nation’s founding — or the possibility of a person identifying as nonbinary — may come to depend on whether they live in a red or blue state.

Legislators advancing restrictive education laws argue they are offering a corrective to what they call a recent left-wing takeover of education. They contend that, in the past decade or so, teachers and professors alike began forcing students to adopt liberal viewpoints on topics ranging from police brutality to whether gender is a binary or a spectrum.

Tennessee state Rep. John Ragan (R), who sponsored or co-sponsored several laws in his state that limit or ban instruction and trainings dealing with race, bias, sexual orientation and gender identity on both K-12 and college campuses, said the legislation he helped pass does not restrict education.

“It is restricting indoctrination,” Ragan said. Under his state’s laws, he said, “the information presented is factually accurate and is in fact something worth knowing.”

Those advancing expansive legislation, by contrast, argue they are fostering conditions in which students from all backgrounds will see themselves reflected in lessons. This will make it easier for every student to learn and be successful, while teaching peers to be tolerant of one another’s differences, said Washington state Sen. Marko Liias (D).

Liias was the architect of a law his state passed last month that requires schools to adopt “inclusive curricula” featuring the histories, contributions and perspectives of the “historically marginalized,” including “people from various racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, people with differing learning needs, people with disabilities [and] LGBTQ people.” He was inspired to propose the bill after hearing from educators who wanted to create more welcoming classrooms and by memories of his own experiences as a queer student in the 1980s and 1990s, when, he said, there were no LGBTQ role models taught or accepted in schools.

“When schools are inclusive broadly of all the identities brought to the classroom, then everybody thrives and does better,” Liias said.

To construct its database of education laws, The Post analyzed more than 2,200 bills, policies, gubernatorial directives and state school board rules introduced since 2017. The Post identified regulations for review by examining state legislative databases, education law trackers maintained by national bipartisan nonprofits and the websites of various advocacy groups that monitor curriculum legislation.

How curriculum policies took hold

Some blue states began enacting expansive education laws in the late 2010s. From 2017 to 2020, 10 states passed legislation or rules that required schools to start teaching about the history of underrepresented groups such as Black Americans, Pacific Islanders or LGBTQ Americans, The Post found .

State and school leaders were drawing on more than a dozen studies published from the 1990s to 2017 that found student performance, attendance and graduate rates rise when children see people like them included in curriculum, said Jennifer Berkshire , a Yale lecturer on education studies.

“They were thinking, ‘You know, our curriculums aren’t representative enough,’” Berkshire said. “The argument was, if we’re going to realize the goal of full rights and civil participation for kids, we need to do things differently.”

Fourteen of these laws, or 36 percent, came in a rush in 2021, the year after the police killing of George Floyd sparked massive demonstrations and a national reckoning over racism. At the time, activists, teachers, parents and high school students across America were urging schools teach more Black history and feature more Black authors.

Of the expansive laws and policies The Post analyzed, the majority — 69 percent — require or expand education on race or racial issues, especially on Black history and ethnic studies. About a quarter add or enhance education on both LGBTQ and racial issues. Just 8 percent focus solely on LGBTQ lives and topics.

But the onslaught of restrictive legislation in red states began in 2021, too, also inspired in many cases by parent concerns over curriculums.

Anxiety first stirred due to coronavirus pandemic-era school shutdowns as some mothers and fathers — granted an unprecedented glimpse into lessons during the era of school-by-laptop — found they did not like or trust what their children were learning.

Soon, some parents were complaining that lessons were biased toward left-leaning views and too focused on what they saw as irrelevant discussions of race, gender and sexuality — laments taken up by conservative pundits and politicians. National groups like Moms for Liberty formed to call out and combat left-leaning teaching in public schools.

Their fears became legislation with speed: Mostly red states passed 26 restrictive education laws and policies in 2021; 19 such laws or policies the next year and 25 more the year after that.

“If you’ve got parents upset at what they’re seeing, they’re going to go to school board meetings and take it up with their legislators,” said Robert Pondiscio , a senior fellow studying education at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “And legislators will do what they do: pass laws.”

How the restrictions and expansions work

The plurality of restrictive laws, 47 percent, target both education on race and sex. About a third solely affect education on gender identity and sexuality, while 21 percent solely affect education on race.

Almost 40 percent of these laws work by granting parents greater control of the curriculum — stipulating that they must be able to review, object to or remove lesson material, as well as opt out of instruction. Schools have long permitted parents to weigh in on education, often informally; but under many of the new laws, parental input has more weight and is mandatory.

Another almost 40 percent of the laws forbid schools from teaching a long list of often-vague concepts related to race, sex or gender.

These outlawed concepts usually include the notion that certain merits, values, beliefs, status or privileges are tied to race or sex; or the theory that students should feel ashamed or guilty due to their race, sex or racial past. One such law, passed in Georgia in 2022, forbids teaching that “an individual, solely by virtue of his or her race, bears individual responsibility for actions committed in the past by other individuals of the same race.”

At the college level, among the measures passed in recent years is a 2021 Oklahoma law that prohibits institutions of higher education from holding “mandatory gender or sexual diversity training or counseling,” as well as any “orientation or requirement that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping.”

By contrast, a 2023 California measure says state community college faculty must employ “teaching, learning and professional practices” that reflect “anti-racist principles.”

Some experts predicted the politically divergent instruction will lead to a more divided society.

“When children are being taught very different stories of what America is, that will lead to adults who have a harder time talking to each other,” said Rachel Rosenberg, a Hartwick College assistant professor of education.

But Pondiscio said there is always tension in American society between the public interest in education and parents’ interest in determining the values transmitted to their children. The conflict veers from acute to chronic, he said, and currently it’s in an acute phase. “But I don’t find it inappropriate. I think it is a natural part of democratic governance and oversight,” Pondiscio said.

He added, “One man’s ‘chilling effect’ is another man’s appropriate circumspections.”

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If online learning works for you, what about deaf students? Emerging challenges of online learning for deaf and hearing-impaired students during COVID-19: a literature review

• Survey Paper
• Published: 25 July 2022
• Volume 22 , pages 1027–1046, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

• Wajdi Aljedaani   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6700-719X 1 ,
• Rrezarta Krasniqi 1 ,
• Sanaa Aljedaani 2 ,
• Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer 3 ,
• Stephanie Ludi 1 &
• Khaled Al-Raddah 3  

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With the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, educational systems worldwide were abruptly affected and hampered, causing nearly total suspension of all in-person activities in schools, colleges, and universities. Government officials prohibited the physical gatherings in educational institutions to reduce the spread of the virus. Therefore, educational institutions have aggressively shifted to alternative learning methods and strategies such as online-based platforms—to seemingly avoid the disruption of education. However, the switch from the face-to-face setting to an entirely online setting introduced a series of challenges, especially for the deaf or hard-of-hearing students. Various recent studies have revealed the underlying infrastructure used by academic institutions may not be suitable for students with hearing impairments. The goal of this study is to perform a literature review of these studies and extract the pressing challenges that deaf and hard-of-hearing students have been facing since their transition to the online setting. We conducted a systematic literature review of 34 articles that were carefully collected, retrieved, and rigorously categorized from various scholarly databases. The articles, included in this study, focused primarily on highlighting high-demanding issues that deaf students experienced in higher education during the pandemic. This study contributes to the research literature by providing a detailed analysis of technological challenges hindering the learning experience of deaf students. Furthermore, the study extracts takeaways and proposed solutions, from the literature, for researchers, education specialists, and higher education authorities to adopt. This work calls for investigating broader and yet more effective teaching and learning strategies for deaf and hard-of-hearing students so that they can benefit from a better online learning experience.

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Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

1 Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has largely affected the education sector, and in particular deaf education. According to Krishnan et al. [ 1 ], various measures to reduce the spread of the disease have led academic institutions to unprecedented changes to their academic activities. For instance, to comply with the social distancing requirement, most schools transitioned to online learning, while some have been forced to temporarily shutdown if such technology was unavailable [ 2 ]. Although these measures have significantly reduced the spread of the virus, they have also introduced several challenges, severely impacting the educational systems worldwide.

Deaf education has been facing a unique set of challenges during COVID-19. To start with, distance learning platforms were quickly adopted mainly for non-disabled students, since they represent the mainstream [ 3 ]. Despite their absolute right to access information, deaf students were initially left out of distance learning under the justification of them constituting a hard to manage population, requiring more specialized educational approaches [ 4 ]. In general, the social distancing measures have led to the exclusion and isolation of deaf students, from instructors who could not promptly respond to their educational needs [ 1 ]. In addition, deaf students have experienced significant difficulties with information sharing. These issues include inadequate access to sign interpreters, loss of visual cues, auditory signal issues arising from the use of face masks, lack of transcripts or captions to lectures, etc. [ 5 ]. As noted by Swanwick et al. [ 6 ], the United Nations [ 7 ] made a declaration titled “Disability-Inclusive Response to COVID-19”, which acknowledged that people with disabilities took the hardest hit during the pandemic and their education requires immediate assistance.

While existing literature has focused on improving accessibility for disabled students in higher education, the pandemic has exposed critical weaknesses of e-learning systems for students with special needs that may need to be addressed. One way to strengthen virtual education is to identify challenges and barriers that appeared during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the major concerns that students with disabilities had to cope with was adjusting to a completely new format of remote learning and instructions [ 8 , 9 , 10 ]. With the strict regulations that all students had to comply with, students with disabilities, in general, and deaf students, in particular, were the most to suffer from them [ 2 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. The goal of this paper is to review and expose the major challenges that deaf students were facing during the pandemic. We start with reviewing all research papers that were written as a response to these challenges; then, we analyze them to extract and categorize all the highlighted problems. Given that several studies have identified those challenges, our research aims to systematically collect and categorize them. This study reviews 34 papers, to extract challenges and their corresponding key mitigation plans.

Reviewing literature on the challenges facing deaf education during the current pandemic can provide solutions to e-learning beyond the pandemic. Previous studies have focused on general e-learning experiences, such as Mseleku [ 14 ], while others have looked at accessibility to online education by generally disabled students [ 15 ]. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to review the literature related to accessibility challenges in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The contributions of this paper are:

A literature review of 34, peer-reviewed, deaf and hearing-impaired publications related to deaf students education during the COVID-19 pandemic, to provide a catalog for future research in this area;

An exploration of the challenges faced by deaf and hearing-impaired students during the COVID-19 pandemic;

Key takeaways extracted from the reviewed studies, for researchers and educators, to improve the learning experience of deaf students;

A replication package of our survey for extension purposes [ 16 ].

This literature review study is structured as follows: Sect.  2 surveys prior work on technological platforms in education and challenges of deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Section  3 outlines our research questions. Section  4 provides an overview of the methodology used in this study to investigate the challenges of deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Section  5 explains our research findings, and Sect.  6 discusses our results. Finally, Sect.  7 highlights the limitations of our research, and Sect.  8 summarizes our conclusions and future work directions.

2 Related work

2.1 deaf community.

In contrast to hearing individuals, a larger percentage of deaf individuals had difficulty trusting, understanding, and accessing COVID-19 information [ 17 ]. The arrival of COVID-19 disrupted a large volume of sectors around the world. Given the substantial number of government and public health announcements concerning COVID-19, information about the virus was communicated in an irregular and inconsistent manner, putting specific communities at an elevated risk. Due to language isolation, the deaf community, in particular, found it difficult to obtain information about COVID-19 [ 18 ]. Deaf individuals typically experience challenges in acquiring health information, resulting in substantial disparities in health knowledge and discrepancies in preventative health care [ 19 ], and this gap has increased during the COVID-19 epidemic. For example, in the beginning of the epidemic, the sign language related to COVID-19 was inadequately established, resulting in misinformation and confusion [ 20 ]. As the media started intensively focusing on the virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) failed to deliver a conventional sign for COVID-19, leaving this responsibility to deaf communities. Thus, a multitude of pandemic-related signs were created throughout the world [ 21 ]. For instance, the Brazilian deaf community used more than three signs for the virus, leading to uncertainty. As it was initially assumed that COVID-19 was transferred from bats, one approved sign for COVID-19 in Brazil was a hand gesture that resembled a bat bite. According to the authors of the study, this sign generated an unintended fear of animal bites and misperceptions about the genuine risk of COVID-19 transmission [ 21 ]. In fact, the risk of contamination and transmission of infection might be elevated owing to the linguistic discrepancies across global Deaf communities.

Moreover, the frequent usage of face masks during the pandemic also impacted the lives of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) individuals, as many of them rely on lip-reading as a way of successful communication with hearing individuals. However, the ability to lip-read is hampered by wearing face masks. Grote and Izagaren [ 22 ] highlighted the detrimental impact on adaptability of the Deaf community in the UK owning to the “#MaskforAll” social media campaign. Even the substitutes for face masks such as transparent face masks are inconvenient to obtain and do not meet the medical standards. The authors concluded that the widespread use of face masks poses a major threat of isolation to the Deaf community, not only in the UK but to Deaf communities across the world.

2.2 Deaf education

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was presented with several barriers in various areas, including the educational sector. An abrupt and unexpected shift of the learning system to distance learning brought with it new obstacles. Alcazar et al. [ 23 ] highlighted the significance of speech-to-visual approach incorporated into distance learning systems as it enables the understanding of material and addresses the individual needs of deaf students.

On the contrary, Baroni and Lazzari [ 24 ] investigated the distance learning experiences of deaf students and revealed that translation, technical, and time problems posed a severe challenge. The teachers and students have faced difficulties adjusting to distant learning at all grade levels and courses [ 25 ]. A study examined the response of the Caribbean education system to the COVID-19 pandemic and concluded that, in addition to the struggle of teachers and students to adapt to remote learning, the courses were not designed to be taught remotely [ 26 ].

The World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) stated that learning materials that are available online might not be intended for deaf students, the accessibility of the internet for some families might be limited, and they might lack the availability of visual and linguistic input [ 27 ]. Moreover, the absence of linguistic support can cause difficulty for deaf students to decode a language [ 28 ]. E-learning might promote inclusive strategies, for instance, providing a written transcripts of classes or captioned videos; however, the complexity of written language might be incomprehensible to the students [ 29 ]. WFD [ 27 ] highlighted that deaf students are expected to learn from homes where sign language is rarely practiced. Moreover, with e-learning, deaf students can be removed from deaf schools with a sign-rich environment. Therefore, with e-learning, the education system for deaf students is at risk of the linguistic barrier due to insufficient availability of sign language [ 30 ].

Pacheco et al. [ 31 ] investigated the difficulties of providing instructional accommodations for students with disabilities in schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many deaf students lack the necessary instructional attention in distance learning [ 32 ]. Replication of physical attention provided to deaf students at schools is not possible at homes with prevalent accessibility issues. Another profound problem that hinders the effectiveness of distance learning is improper training of teachers [ 31 ]. In distance learning, students learn in a group format. Therefore, this setting lacks the individual attention needed for deaf students. More importantly, the communication gap, due to the inappropriate handling of physical gestures, significantly hinders students’ learning curve. Even parents’ involvement in such classes was found to be difficult for a regular learning process to be sustainable [ 33 ]. In addition to the difficulties faced by deaf students, their families also deal with critical issues such as technical support and accessibility of the learning environment. Sommer [ 34 ] conducted a study in the USA and revealed that inaccessibility of information for deaf students during the COVID-19 pandemic had a severe emotional impact on them. In a survey by Krishnan et al. [ 1 ], the authors found unfamiliarity with hearing devices, online devices, distractions are the main difficulties DHH students are facing with e-learning platforms.

2.3 E-learning platforms

The evolution of technology has greatly improved the education sector, especially with the introduction of learning management systems (LMSs). According to Iqbal [ 35 ], an LMS is a learner-centered technology that focuses on the logistics of managing learners, distribution of learning content, enables interactions between learners and teachers, among other functions. As defined by Dobre [ 36 ], LMSs can be considered as “a set of software platforms, delivered to users by instructors through internet and by the use of various hardware means, having as purpose the delivery in the shortest time possible a high level of knowledge into a domain assuring in the same time a full management of the entire educational cycle, including data and information.” Such a definition provides an elaborate explanation of the purposes of LMS and also shows why the systems have become very crucial in the COVID-19 pandemic when social interactions have been curtailed.

As indicated by Oliveira et al. [ 37 ], LMS systems emerged in the 1990s when the first web browsers were developed and have been greatly improved since then. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Mtebe [ 38 ] indicates that LMS was used either to supplement face-to-face instruction, or to facilitate distance education for students who could not access physical classrooms. However, Alqahtani and Rajkhan [ 39 ] indicate that, due to the current pandemic, many institutions have been forced to shut down and offer learning through LMS. There are a large number of LMSs that are currently in use, but the most common are: Blackboard, canvas, Moodle, among others [ 40 ]. Thus, educational systems adopt LMS depending on their needs, functionalities, and preferences. Batanero et al. [ 41 ] found that integration of the Moodle learning platform enhanced the performance of deaf students by 46.25%. According to Batanero-Ochaíta et al. [ 42 ], the deaf students showed constructive attitude toward Moodle learning platform; however, their perceptions varied on the ease of use and complexity of the platform.

Rather than simply making online course materials more accessible, additional practices must be ingrained in the university settings that convey comfort and safety [ 43 , 44 , 45 ]. Alshawabkeh et al. [ 46 ] suggested a formal IT training with an interpreter for the deaf students prior to using LMS.

3 Research questions

This study aims to explore the barriers of deaf and hard-of-hearing students in education during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study may help identify and critically expose the wide range of concerns and difficulties faced by deaf students during the pandemic. Furthermore, our literature review findings may serve as a comprehensive source for improving the deaf education. Specifically, we investigate the following Research Questions (RQs):

RQ \(_1\) : What challenges and concerns are deaf and hard-of-hearing students in higher education facing with an online education during the COVID-19 pandemic?

RQ1 investigates a series of challenges and concerns during remote learning that deaf and hard-of-hearing students had to endure on the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic. We will explore more in-depth the findings related to recently published work in this domain and discuss implications since COVID-19 emerged as a global humanitarian problem.

RQ \(_2\) : What are emerging solutions to better handle challenges faced in deaf education during the COVID-19 pandemic?

RQ2 investigates the extent to which emerging in-demand solutions can be proposed to overcome some of the major barriers pinpointed in RQ1. At a larger schema, these solutions can serve as a mediating, non-perfunctory source of information to cope better with remote learning. It will shed light on alternating strategies and guidelines that could facilitate deaf and hearing-impaired remote learning, and methods that could be implemented within institutions globally for a more efficient remote learning.

4 Methodology

This present research is a literature review. It explores the existing most up-to-date scholarly sources relating to the subject of the research to answer the research questions. The objective is to explore the key challenges of the deaf and hearing-impaired in education during the COVID-19 pandemic. This section is divided into the three phases followed when selecting relevant publications: planning, execution, and synthesis. Each of these steps is explained in the following sections.

Overview of publications filtering process

4.1 Planning

This step entailed refining our search strategy for literature. In line with the literature review methodology, we formulated a set of keywords related to our study, which we searched on various digital repositories.

4.1.1 Search keywords

We conducted a pilot search [ 47 ] to guide our formulation of search keywords in two repositories: ACM and IEEE. We wanted to identify the synonyms and words that are used when describing the barriers to deaf education during the COVID-19 period. Therefore, our search was restricted to the abstracts and titles only. Such a strategy helped in avoiding false positives. The search string used is as follows:

4.1.2 Digital libraries

A literature search was carried out in the following libraries: Scopus, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, Web of Science, Springer Link, Virtual Health Library, Wiley, ERIC, and Science Direct. We selected the nine libraries in order to ensure maximum coverage of the topic so that no important study was left out and utilized by similar studies (e.g., [ 48 ]). The various libraries queried are provided in Table  1 . The libraries contained studies related to ours and in the fields of hearing-impaired education.

4.1.3 Inclusion/exclusion criteria

These criteria were useful in filtering and pruning our search results so that we were only left with those publications that were aligned with our study. For example, it was essential to ensure that we got studies in the education context and written in English while excluding those in the medical area and not peer-reviewed. We also included papers that were available in digital format and published during the COVID-19 period. The inclusion/ exclusion criteria are given in Table  2 . Although we aimed at a final pool of relevant papers, the initial search results helped in manual filtering to evaluate the appropriateness of the studies for our research. For example, it was crucial to know the kind of obstacles they identified. Regarding the time frame, we restricted it to 2020, 2021, and 2022, which are the years that have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

4.1.4 Backward/forward snowballing

We undertook snowballing to add valuable articles to the ones we had obtained using automated search. According to Wohlin [ 49 ], snowballing involves reviewing papers that have emerged for a literature search and identifying articles that have cited the given paper (forward snowballing) or those that have been cited in the paper (backward snowballing). We conducted the snowballing in a closed recursive manner to make it more effective. As a result, we got a total of 10 articles from snowballing, from where we selected 7 that met our selection criteria. Finally, we included the articles from the snowballing activity to make our final count of 34 articles.

4.1.5 Exclusion during data extraction

Researchers can still eliminate some of the selected articles even at the data extraction stage. Such a situation occurs when the researcher discovers that a paper is a duplicate of another or meets the exclusion criteria. For example, we had an article that provided general information about communication obstacles during COVID-19 without focusing on deaf students [ 50 ], while another took a medical perspective instead of an educational one [ 51 ].

4.2 Execution

This section depicts the search results from the various digital libraries. The first search in all nine repositories gave a total of 126 articles. After that, we used four stages to evaluate the most relevant publications to our study. The first stage involved removing duplicate and retracted publications, where 6 articles were eliminated, and 120 publications proceeded to the next phase. The second stage was the title and abstract filtering, where we utilized our inclusion and exclusion criteria. In total, we removed 51 publications and allowed 69 to move to the next phase. For instance, the application of our inclusion and exclusion criteria led to the elimination of grey literature, non-peer-reviewed materials, and articles published before 2020, among others. The third stage was full-text filtering, which led to the removal of 42 articles and allowing 27 to move to the next phase. The final stage involved performing both forward and backward snowball sampling [ 49 ] that led to the addition of 7 articles. In total, 34 articles were selected for further analysis. Figure  1 shows the search execution process. Finally, we presented the titles of the 34 papers illustrated in the form of a word cloud as depicted in Fig.  2 .

Word cloud of the titles of the selected papers

4.3 Synthesis

During the synthesis phase, we examined the collected data with regard to how they could meet our research objectives. We classified the articles according to their country of origin and year of publication in order to understand where and when the barriers to deaf education were experienced. We ensured that every study was thoroughly scrutinized for concrete evidence and that all facts were provided. Careful examination was done to collect all data related to deaf education obstacles during COVID-19. For each study, we extracted the disability type such as deaf, hard-of-hearing, or hearing impairment, the year of publication, study methodology, source of information, approach of collecting data, participant type (i.e., teachers, students, leaders), study sample size, and study location.

To reduce bias in our data, we utilized a peer-review strategy, where all researchers reviewed the data, and any points of contention were discussed. The data was transferred to a Google Spreadsheet to ensure the collaboration of all the authors was in sync during the research. It is important to state that three of the authors were familiar with the scope of studies and have made similar publications and contributions in the past [ 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 ].

Overview of literature taxonomy of the selected research papers in our dataset. It highlights the methodology used and the targeted user group

Distribution of publications across countries

This section reports the findings that we obtained by synthesizing various articles according to the scope of two research questions asked in this study. We analyzed a total of 34 articles. We report the characteristics of this set of studies extensively in Table  3 . The data collected from this set of studies ranged from 2020 to 2022. The types of methods that these studies carried out are represented via a taxonomy as depicted in Fig.  3 . The figure provides a grouping of all the studies according to the methodology and methods used in the studies and the focus of the studies. From the figure, the most notable and common studies were those conducted in the form of surveys, interviews, and observational studies. The most common artifacts used to carry out those types of studies included social media, questionnaires, phone interviews, and other related documents such as guidelines. Regarding the focus of the studies, the most popular target groups in the surveys, interviews, and other studies were hard-of-hearing and deaf. Using the literature taxonomy, we were able to overview the studies we selected.

In Fig.  4 , we wanted to establish the country of origin from which the studies were done. According to the collected data, we notice that most of the studies were conducted in the USA. The second-highest number of studies originated from Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Greece, Italy, and Malaysia, with all other countries having one study each. Such findings can help motivate scholars from countries with few or no studies to research deaf challenges in their locations. Figure  5 shows an overview of the types of the dataset used across all the 20 studies. It is evident from the figure that social media was the most common and diverse data collection method that was used in the studies. It is possible to speculate that most researchers used social media platforms because of their popularity and because their use has not been affected by the social distancing measures implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. The extensive use of technology during the pandemic, especially in education, also means that students with learning disabilities faced all kinds of challenges of different ranges from the unsuitability of technologies to health matters. That does not rule out the fact that similar challenges were not observed in other countries such as Indonesia or Italy and other countries. In fact, we noticed that the types of challenges that deaf students experienced were almost uniform across countries. It is important to place our findings within the context of the two research questions that we developed in this study.

Overview of types of dataset used across 20 studies

In this research question, we wanted to identify the issues that deaf students were facing during the pandemic. From our findings, we categorized the challenges into four categories: technological; educational; accessibility; and usage issues, and health-related.

Technology-related challenges Our main focus was to explore how technical issues affected deaf education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Deaf education faced four challenges: unavailability of hearing devices, disruptions during online lessons, and lack of familiarity with the online devices [ 1 , 11 , 57 , 58 , 59 ]. It is noted that the challenges in deaf education during COVID-19 can be grouped into three groups: technological, organizational, and methodical [ 60 , 61 ]. Technological challenges are those related to accessibility; organization depends on the collaboration between teachers, while methodical indicates how the instructions were taught. Mohammed [ 62 ] pointed out that video quality, internet stability, and language modality posed major technological barriers to distance learning for deaf students. Aljedaani et al. [ 63 ] presented the challenges faced by deaf students in distance learning and found that among 8 of the participants, 96.9% faced issues with internet connectivity at home and 72% of the responses showed inaccessibility of the content. Our interpretation of the aforementioned challenges is as follows: While students in general picked up quickly using new technology [ 64 ], this was not regarded as a doable option for students with disabilities [ 2 ]. On the contrary, they were faced with a series of challenges with the setup of the technology. First, the students with disabilities found it challenging to use the recommended technology. That was primarily because the interfaces of the software and applications were not designed to accommodate students with hearing disabilities [ 65 , 66 ]. Second, students experienced enormous challenges adapting the use of video conferencing for synchronous lectures [ 61 , 67 ]. Third, it was overwhelmingly difficult for students with hearing needs to follow conversations with multiple signers communicating simultaneously [ 11 , 68 , 69 ]. The lack of simultaneous translation was also one of the major obstacles to address [ 61 ]. Finally, delays in mainstream and remote classroom setup while interacting with deaf students or asking questions were a significant problem (since deaf students use sign language to ask questions), which the translator then interprets to the instructor [ 70 , 71 ]. The findings of Alqraini and Alasim [ 72 ] highlighted deaf students’ lack of focus during classes, as they choose to play games on their devices instead of paying attention to the ongoing lesson. We believe that such issues require solutions to facilitate deaf education.

Education system-related challenges We also aimed to identify those challenges that were related to learning and the educational system. We found that, while most of the students got adjusted fairly quickly to the remote online system [ 73 ], this became a huge barrier, especially for deaf students [ 72 , 74 ]. Even in a typical classroom setting, d/DHH students generally attend classes with the support of a special education team due to their special needs [ 75 ]. However, working from home, this new adjustment, in reality, created substantial barriers for deaf and hard-of-hearing students [ 3 ]. Researchers [ 46 , 59 , 76 ] underscored that the lack of sign language interpreter hinders the understanding of deaf students with inadequate vocabulary knowledge. Even though the interpreters were present during the online classes, however, due to small visuals, it became challenging for the students to understand. Alsindi et al. [ 77 ] highlighted that in addition to miscommunication between teacher and student, the lack of interpreter’s knowledge regarding art and design hindered the performance of students. Deaf students have also suffered from a lack of access to education and welfare services, such as inadequate sign language interpreting avenues, the difficulty of lip-reading when teachers are wearing masks, limited direct support by teachers, among others [ 58 , 78 , 79 , 80 ]. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened social exclusion among deaf students, especially with the disruption of daily interactions with other people, lack of access to information, and inadequate sign language interpreters [ 6 , 61 ]. The exclusion is caused by lack of internet access, poor infrastructure, poverty that impedes lack of access to high-quality educational materials, barriers relating to lack of accessible learning management systems (LMSs), inability to use the LMS to access the content, and LMSs that do not cater for the needs of deaf students [ 2 ]. Deaf education in some countries has been affected by a lack of resources in public schools, unpreparedness among teachers of deaf children, greater exclusion, and obstacles such as lack of real-time transcription services, technical issues, and unavailability of subtitles on videos [ 3 , 58 , 72 ]. The suggested problems call for improvement of the education system to make it more conducive to deaf education.

Physical accessibility challenges Adequate, accessible experience for students with hearing disabilities was an unattainable goal [ 59 , 61 , 81 ], even though distance learning equipment and technologies such as video-conference technologies, different websites, electronic platforms, applications, and/or various databases became available for most disabled students [ 9 , 82 ]. This was not the case for underdeveloped countries [ 83 ]. Furthermore, some students with hearing disabilities lived in areas where there was hardly any access to the internet [ 13 , 84 ]. To add another layer of barriers, some students with disabilities did not possess even basic technologies [ 79 ]. Hence, without physical attendance, remote learning for students with auditory access needs became a huge struggle for students with disabilities [ 81 ]. We also established that, during the current pandemic, wearing masks seemed to have become the major impediment for students who were deaf or with hearing impairments [ 85 ]. Indeed, face masks became the worst enemy for hard-of-hearing and deaf students. Most importantly, a cloth face mask inhibited speech reading and blocked muffling sound [ 81 ]. They even prevented students from reading lips. The other concern pertained to both audibility and intelligibility of speech. Due to the wearing of masks, students with hearing issues found the teachers voices completely diminished through the use of masks and shields [ 86 ]. This made the student–instructor communication poor and inaccessible. Physical distance also became a significant obstacle between students and faculty only because this unconventional communication reduced speech audibility and intelligibility [ 12 , 87 ].

Health-related challenges The other most critical challenge pertains to the mental health of disability students [ 88 ]. Students with hearing disabilities showed four times more than other students increased symptoms of anxiety, depression, and emotional challenges compared with the general population [ 89 ]. We established that some health-related issues that emerged during and before the pandemic were affecting deaf education. For instance, deaf students have faced emotional challenges due to isolation from their classmates and lack of access to important information during the pandemic [ 34 , 90 ]. The fact that most deaf students have experience impractical delays has also led to emotional and social issues among them [ 1 , 70 ]. All these challenges have led to numerous mental health problems and unforeseen psychological impacts [ 91 ].

In this section, we will discuss the proposed solutions to the most prominent issues that have been identified in the previous section. The technology used in deaf education must ensure that the audio is clear and with self-explanatory images, the activities taught should be easy due to the online learning challenges, and there should be concerted efforts from all stakeholders [ 60 ]. Furthermore, deaf students should be given mental health services, training on pragmatic skills, be provided with hearing aids, be encouraged to read, and also be facilitated to gain information during the pandemic [ 1 , 34 , 70 , 90 ]. It is also recommended that parents look for suitable online educational programs, find opportunities for exposure to deaf students, communicate with deaf and hard-of-hearing students, enable deaf and hard-of-hearing students to socialize, and assist them in getting the services they need [ 92 ]. A combination of government-led and community-led responses has also provided greater educational and social support for deaf students [ 78 ]. It is also proposed that recognition of group rights will lead to greater inclusion for deaf students, so that cultural and linguistic accessibility can be offered to the population [ 6 ]. For example, sign language should be considered and recognized as a language like any other.

It is also important to develop videos with captions and interpretations, whether offline, online through YouTube or cloud-based Zoom recordings, which are especially useful to the deaf community [ 8 , 10 , 58 , 72 , 74 , 82 , 93 ]. An important aspect of the videos is that they must be thoroughly tested for validity to ensure their effectiveness, and revisions are done in order to improve the quality of the videos. Sutton [ 10 ] also notes the importance of providing interpreters and speech-to-text capabilities for deaf students during the pandemic to aid their learning. It is suggested that governments should utilize inclusive educational models, improve the accessibility of deaf students to various services, provide deaf-friendly masks, expand television programming, and hire more teachers in order to have a favorable number of staff assisting deaf students [ 3 , 79 ]. Low-income families should be given financial assistance to purchase electronic equipment for their children as recommended by Alqraini and Alasim [ 72 ]. The authors also proposed that a quiet environment should be created for the students during their lessons. [ 62 ] suggested the provision of standard educational technologies to teachers and students, proper training of teachers [ 46 , 57 , 84 ], hosting workshops concerning deaf culture, and video translation of textbooks in sign language to ensure the effectiveness of distance learning.

Karampidis et al. [ 94 ] recommended that distance learning platforms should be integrated with “Hercules”, a bidirectional translator that translates five languages, including Greek, Cypriot, British, German, Slovenian, and Portuguese, to their respective sign languages and vice versa. Institutions must incorporate a better approach to provide accessible technology that individuals with diverse needs can adapt during the pandemic [ 63 ]. Another study [ 95 ] suggested the use of ICT (Information Communication Technology) to conduct online classes in the pandemic. The uninterpreted-learning ICT models were preferred by the participants of the case study [ 84 ] over Zoom classes. Mathews et al. [ 96 ] stated that to address the communication gap in distance learning, interpreters have had to employ a variety of specialized expertise, interact with one another, and actively involve both their hearing clients and deaf communities in diverse settings. The study also recommended vocabulary development of the interpreters to convey the lessons more conveniently. Alshawabkeh et al. [ 46 ] suggested that deaf students must be trained by an IT professional with a sign language interpreter prior to initiation of distance learning. Students, teachers, and interpreters should collaborate in order to present material simultaneously. They also proposed that teachers involve deaf students in planning the online class before it begins. Institutions should continuously evaluate the deaf student’s feedback to enhance the quality of distance learning. Moreover, the existing LMSs must be provided with additional features for the DHH students [ 77 ].

Our study has also shown that governments should also put in place inclusive emergency plans and improve access to telecommunication services such as the internet to deaf students [ 2 ]. It is also proposed that policy changes should be made to enable deaf adults to participate in early intervention teams and greater collaboration from multi-agency teams in order to have professional teams working toward inclusion and education of deaf children in the pandemic [ 9 ]. Deaf students should have a conducive environment at home, support from parents, online instructional content, access to specialist support, and good access to instructions to mitigate the connectivity challenges [ 11 , 81 ]. It is evident that collaborations from a wide range of stakeholders will provide the necessary support and resources needed for improving deaf education.

6 Discussion

Our literature review provides an elaborate overview of the challenges that deaf students have been facing in education during the course of the current pandemic. Furthermore, we also reviewed potential solutions that can be enforced and incorporated by different authors. In this section, we provide notable takeaways from our study.

Takeaway 1: Provide necessary equipment and technology We have established that a lack of equipment such as hearing aids and inaccessibility to the internet are major obstacles impeding deaf education in the COVID-19 pandemic. The problem is worse in rural areas and those with high levels of poverty [ 2 ]. As further indicated by Paatsch and Toe [ 70 ], global research has shown that many deaf students attend mainstream classes that do not have adequate support for the difficulties that such students face. It has also been demonstrated that deaf students face challenges when using Zoom platforms, especially given that the platform has a steep learning curve and its features are not easily understood by all students [ 11 ]. One of the technologies lacking for many deaf students is Remote microphone (RM) hearing assistive technology (HAT), which should be customized to the needs of every student [ 81 ]. It is important to address such issues in order to promote remote deaf education during the current pandemic.

Takeaway 2: Improve accessibility and usage of learning materials We have noted that many institutions have digitized their content; however, it is still inaccessible due to lack of captioning and unclear audio, among other issues. Such a finding is consistent with Fernandes et al. [ 93 ], who found that learning materials for deaf students should meet the validity and effectiveness so that they can be of help to deaf students. However, it is not translated even when such content is accessed, and there are no speech-to-text services. Furthermore, deaf students find it hard to follow the teacher during virtual classes, when several faces are appearing on the screen simultaneously, or when captions’ speed is fast [ 92 ]. The lack of self-explanatory images, presence of background music, and inclusion of unnecessary decorative details also make the accessibility of learning materials difficult [ 60 ]. It is important to provide visual materials and techniques that will help deaf students learn more effectively [ 61 ]. Another accessibility challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic is that the use of face masks by teachers on online platforms makes it hard for deaf students to read lips, which is a major challenge in their learning that should be overcome by using clear masks [ 10 ]. The provision of accessible learning materials will be very important in improving deaf education.

Takeaway 3: Improve collaboration and partnership It has been clear that all stakeholders should be involved in improving deaf education. The proposed solutions indicate the important role played by the government, teachers, parents, and specialists in improving education outcomes for deaf students. Using the example of Saudi Arabia [ 2 ], governments can play a crucial role to help in creating a conducive environment for deaf education. Furthermore, in Italy, Tomasuolo et al. [ 78 ] explain the crucial role of stakeholder lobbying by deaf organizations such as the World Federation of deaf (WFD), the Italian National Deaf Association, among others. It is noted that collaboration between deaf community members, deaf organizations, scholars, and activists in many countries around the world has led to greater access to education, improved use of captions, greater use of Text apps, broadcasting of content that considers the deaf community, utilization of clear masks, among others [ 9 , 79 ]. Therefore, such collaborations and partnerships provide important opportunities for improving the quality of deaf education in the current pandemic.

Takeaway 4: Cater for the mental health needs of deaf and impaired students We have found that some students developed mental health issues during the pandemic, while others already had them prior. As explained by Krishnan et al. [ 1 ], such a situation has been brought about by the social distancing and related protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has added to their isolation and lack of social interactions. Swanwick et al. [ 6 ] indicate that deaf students faced social exclusion even before the pandemic, but the current situation has exposed and deepened the issue. The pandemic has also led to negative emotional responses from deaf students because the pandemic has led to the school closing, fear of illness, social distancing, among other family problems [ 34 ]. It has been noted that deaf students are psychologically resistant to the effects of the pandemic but show less mental resilience compared to normal hearing students [ 90 ]. Providing counseling and psychological services is crucial.

Takeaway 5: Simplify the LMSs Our study has shown that the mere availability of the LMSs does not guarantee quality online education for deaf students. Indeed, the switch to online learning has been abrupt due to COVID-19, and most deaf students faced tremendous challenges in accessing the content on LMS platforms [ 2 ]. It has also been observed that there were predominant challenges in ensuring an uninterrupted-learning environment via video conferencing, for example, whether Zoom could adequately display LMS-located content or not [ 74 ]. Such systems need to be simplified and customized to improve their usability features and look and feel for deaf students. LMSs are extremely important for remote access to materials and learning for deaf students. The suggestion for their simplification is a crucial takeaway that should be taken into account so that deaf and hard-of-hearing students can fully take advantage of such platforms.

6.1 Recommendations for future research

Future researchers may investigate the techniques of refining LMSs to improve their accessibility. Such a proposition is made because this study has established that many deaf students are unable to fully take advantage of LMS systems [ 63 ]. Potentially, scholars may look at improving the functionality of such systems, customizing them to meet the needs of individual students, and simplifying their navigation.

Scholars can investigate how mental health issues among deaf students can be mitigated. It is apparent that deaf students are facing a hard time during the pandemic, and the inability to cope can lead to stress. Researchers can investigate the possible ways of addressing the educational and socioeconomic factors that should be addressed so that such students have peace of mind and better mental health outcomes.

It would also be important to explore how stakeholder engagement can be improved to harness their efforts to help deaf students. It has been established in this study that the roles of various stakeholders are very important in ensuring quality education for the deaf. Other scholars may utilize stakeholder engagement models and frameworks to explain how such stakeholders can work with each other collaboratively so that the learning outcomes of deaf students can be achieved.

Since we have established a challenge relating to learning materials, subsequent studies could investigate the factors that lead to their inadequacy. For example, it would be important to establish whether institutions get enough funding from the government to purchase materials and other resources that are needed to educate deaf students. In addition, the maintenance of such materials, ensuring efficient and equitable use, as well as their administration, should be evaluated.

Future researchers can investigate the issues facing other sections of the deaf population, such as immigrants, or across different age-groups. It has been established that there are wide disparities in learning and education outcomes between such groups and the rest of the population. Given that being deaf also comes with unique challenges, it would be important to understand how the intersectionality between social disadvantage and deafness affects deaf students. For instance, it would be prudent to explore the challenges that deaf students from poor backgrounds face during the pandemic.

7 Limitations

As with any other study, certain limitations are present in this study. We conducted this study using a systematic literature review process [ 98 , 99 ]. Our literature review highlights the major obstacles to deaf and hard-of-hearing distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the fact that our study is limited to impaired and hearing students, there are several limitations worth noting. We explain these limitations as follows.

Data completeness The first limitation of the systematic literature review is the scope and appropriate selection of digital libraries. Therefore, we selected nine diverse electronic data sources. The next step was to ensure that the relevant literature publications were identified and included. We reasoned, though, that there might be other sources relevant within our domain search. Regardless, we attempted to mitigate this limitation as follows. We seeded a domain search with a set of search queries. If sufficient domain expertise is available, the search queries can be created manually; otherwise, a snowballing technique can be used [ 49 , 100 ] in which a small number of initial search terms are used to retrieve a set of results, and then, commonly occurring domain-specific phrases are identified and used to seed further search queries. We also employed an iterative strategy for our term-list construction. Different research communities might likely refer to the same concept or term differently. Hence, the iterative strategy ensured that adequate terms were used in the search process.

Taxonomy bread-and-depth The second limitation is the validity of the constructed taxonomy. We reason whether the taxonomy has sufficient breadth and depth to ensure that accurate classification and systematic analysis are achieved within the deaf and hearing disability domain’s scope. To mitigate this limitation, we employed a well-known content analysis method. In this case, the taxonomy was continuously filtered and evolved to account for every essential component of the paper included. This iterative process boosted our confidence that the taxonomy incurred substantially good coverage for the methods and types of disabilities that were included and examined throughout this literature review.

Objectiveness The third limitation refers to the objectiveness of the study. Typically this reflects on possible biases or flaws in the results. To mitigate this limitation, we have examined each reviewer’s bias by cross-checking the papers. What that means is that no paper received only one reviewer. Thus, multiple reviewers were involved in the process. Furthermore, we have also obtained the summary of the conclusions according to a collection of categorized papers, rather than following only individual reviewers’ interpretations or views with one goal only to avoid bias.

Now that we have identified the barriers to distance learning faced by deaf and hard-of-hearing during the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe future researchers would benefit from this study.

8 Conclusion and further work

In this study, we conducted a comprehensive literature review with the aim to investigate the chief challenges that education has faced recently by deaf and hard-of-hearing students during the COVID-19 pandemic. In summary, our research contributions provide substantial evidence about the immediate need to investigate the barriers that we emphasized in the previous section. Furthermore, this early contribution of the present work opens an opportunity for the research community and the educational sector to address these needs broadly and globally with similar interest and care. Additionally, our work directly contributes to the literature by providing a detailed analysis of online learning challenges for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Most critically, it brings forward attention to recommending educational systems to be more accessible during pandemic crises and leverage teaching strategies that can be easily incorporated even in the face of environmental crisis. In addition, we have also disseminated our data as a supplementary electronic file for the research community to engage more extensively in a similar line of research and replicate our work for further advancement of SLR research.

In future work, we will investigate these challenges by extending it further by leveraging an interview-based study with deaf and hard-of-hearing students, where we can understand each problem and propose possible improvements in regard to these problems for individuals and groups. Continuing further this line of research may have an impact on improving and refining existing distance learning pedagogical methodologies and enable participation of the deaf community word-widely beyond the current educational deficiencies within the realm of the accessibility domain.

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Aljedaani, W., Krasniqi, R., Aljedaani, S. et al. If online learning works for you, what about deaf students? Emerging challenges of online learning for deaf and hearing-impaired students during COVID-19: a literature review. Univ Access Inf Soc 22 , 1027–1046 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-022-00897-5

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In some classrooms in Senegal, deaf and hard-of-hearing students now study alongside everyone else

By ANDREI POPOVICIU Associated Press

PIKINE, Senegal (AP) — Mouhamed Sall stepped to the chalkboard with a glance and quick question in sign language to an assistant. Then he solved the exercise to the silent approval of his classmates, who waved their hands in a display of appreciation.

Sall and three other students are part of a new approach in a small number of schools in Senegal that seat those who are deaf and hard of hearing with the rest of the class.

Some classmates at the sun-washed Apix Guinaw Rails Sud school in a suburb of the capital, Dakar, have embraced the chance to learn sign language in the months since Sall arrived. The class is lively and cheeky: “No teachers allowed in this room,” graffiti scrawled above the chalkboard says.

“I have no problem communicating with some colleagues I went to primary school with,” Sall said as his mother spoke. “The new colleagues don’t know sign language but we still play together.”

“We’ve been friends, so it was easy to learn sign language,” said classmate Salane Senghor, who also knew Sall in primary school. New classmates were curious, looking to the assistant to find out what he was saying.

The United Nations children’s agency says about 60% of children with disabilities in Senegal are not going to school. But the government lacks comprehensive data on the issue and counts only children who are formally registered as having a disability.

“We’re looking for progress from the government to ensure every child, regardless of ability, has the opportunity to learn,” said Sara Poehlman with UNICEF Senegal.

Senegal lacks a national strategy for inclusive education, but it is developing one. Recent political instability in the West African nation has hindered progress.

The challenges are compounded by a stigma that some in Senegal associate with disabilities. Some parents hide their children and prevent them from participating in society.

But attitudes are changing. In 2021, Senegal’s football team for deaf and hard of hearing players won the first African football championship for such teams and played in the world championship, to the congratulations of Senegal’s president. During the recent election, the National Association for the Promotion of the Deaf in Senegal and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems organized a workshop to teach hard-of-hearing voters over 100 election-related terms in sign language.

Now there’s more visibility in classrooms.

The organization Humanity and Inclusion last year began partnering with Senegal’s education ministry for mixed classes in four public secondary schools with inclusive education practices. Apix is one of them. Humanity and Inclusion funds the hiring of assistants who can communicate in sign language.

“We see that all children are on an equal footing, and that’s why we make an inclusive class or school by harmonizing with the hearing pupils,” said Papa Amadou, one assistant.

Sall is receiving education free of charge, a big advantage in a part of the world where school fees can be a constant source of stress for parents.

Until now, Senegal has had mostly specialized schools for children with disabilities, but they are often private and expensive.

Sall’s mother, Khadija Koundio, at first paid about $17 every month for him to attend an activity center for children with learning challenges in their neighborhood. Then he was able to enter primary school with the support of a similar Humanity and Inclusion program created several years ago in a small number of schools for younger students.

Omar Diop, head supervisor at Apix, praised the new secondary school program but said challenges continue.

“It’s their first year for the teachers, so that poses a problem because the children come with a much higher level of sign language,” Diop said.

Mamadou Konte, the Apix school director, emphasized the need for more teacher training. “We’ve seen success at our school, but this model needs to be replicated nationwide,” Konte added.

Challenges remain for students and families, too. Koundio, president of the parents’ association for the school’s deaf and hard-of-hearing students, said some of her son’s classmates live farther away and struggle with the cost of commuting.

Poehlman with UNICEF highlighted government initiatives like the Carte de l’Égalité, which provides financial assistance to families so children can access specialized schools, but she stressed the importance of programs implemented in public schools.

Jandira Monteiro with Humanity and Inclusion urged collaboration between Senegal’s ministries of health and education to ensure holistic support for children with disabilities.

Sall said he feels accepted by his peers. The teachers at Apix commend him on his intelligence and his artistic talents in crafting bright models of houses and traditional boats called pirogues.

His mother wants him to pursue his passions, including art.

“One day, when I’m gone, he’ll have enough to support himself,” she said.

Ndeye Sene Mbengue in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.

The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

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About half of americans say public k-12 education is going in the wrong direction.

About half of U.S. adults (51%) say the country’s public K-12 education system is generally going in the wrong direction. A far smaller share (16%) say it’s going in the right direction, and about a third (32%) are not sure, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in November 2023.

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to understand how Americans view the K-12 public education system. We surveyed 5,029 U.S. adults from Nov. 9 to Nov. 16, 2023.

The survey was conducted by Ipsos for Pew Research Center on the Ipsos KnowledgePanel Omnibus. The KnowledgePanel is a probability-based web panel recruited primarily through national, random sampling of residential addresses. The survey is weighted by gender, age, race, ethnicity, education, income and other categories.

Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and the survey methodology .

A majority of those who say it’s headed in the wrong direction say a major reason is that schools are not spending enough time on core academic subjects.

These findings come amid debates about what is taught in schools , as well as concerns about school budget cuts and students falling behind academically.

Related: Race and LGBTQ Issues in K-12 Schools

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say the public K-12 education system is going in the wrong direction. About two-thirds of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (65%) say this, compared with 40% of Democrats and Democratic leaners. In turn, 23% of Democrats and 10% of Republicans say it’s headed in the right direction.

Among Republicans, conservatives are the most likely to say public education is headed in the wrong direction: 75% say this, compared with 52% of moderate or liberal Republicans. There are no significant differences among Democrats by ideology.

Similar shares of K-12 parents and adults who don’t have a child in K-12 schools say the system is going in the wrong direction.

A separate Center survey of public K-12 teachers found that 82% think the overall state of public K-12 education has gotten worse in the past five years. And many teachers are pessimistic about the future.

Related: What’s It Like To Be A Teacher in America Today?

Why do Americans think public K-12 education is going in the wrong direction?

We asked adults who say the public education system is going in the wrong direction why that might be. About half or more say the following are major reasons:

• Schools not spending enough time on core academic subjects, like reading, math, science and social studies (69%)
• Teachers bringing their personal political and social views into the classroom (54%)
• Schools not having the funding and resources they need (52%)

About a quarter (26%) say a major reason is that parents have too much influence in decisions about what schools are teaching.

How views vary by party

Americans in each party point to different reasons why public education is headed in the wrong direction.

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say major reasons are:

• A lack of focus on core academic subjects (79% vs. 55%)
• Teachers bringing their personal views into the classroom (76% vs. 23%)

In turn, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to point to:

• Insufficient school funding and resources (78% vs. 33%)
• Parents having too much say in what schools are teaching (46% vs. 13%)

Views also vary within each party by ideology.

Among Republicans, conservatives are particularly likely to cite a lack of focus on core academic subjects and teachers bringing their personal views into the classroom.

Among Democrats, liberals are especially likely to cite schools lacking resources and parents having too much say in the curriculum.

Note: Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and the survey methodology .

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‘Back to school’ means anytime from late July to after Labor Day, depending on where in the U.S. you live

Among many u.s. children, reading for fun has become less common, federal data shows, most european students learn english in school, for u.s. teens today, summer means more schooling and less leisure time than in the past, about one-in-six u.s. teachers work second jobs – and not just in the summer, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Pipeline Disruption: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Next Generation of Teachers

• Aubrey Scheopner Torres Saint Anselm College
• Lisa D'Souza Assumption University

This qualitative study aims to provide insight into why teacher candidates, interested in pursuing K-12 teaching, made the decision to leave their traditional teacher preparation programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers utilized sociocultural theory as the framework to ground the research. The study finds the educational disruption caused by the pandemic added a layer of complexity to candidates’ experiences, including missed opportunities, limited clinical experience, and a general sense of uncertainty, which altered teacher candidates’ outlook on the teaching profession, impacted their education journeys, and ultimately shifted their immediate career trajectories. The results from this study indicate that clinical experiences are an important predictor of whether teacher candidates remain in their preparation programs. With this research study, we hope to support the development of a more robust teacher pipeline.

Author Biographies

Aubrey scheopner torres, saint anselm college.

Department of Education, Associate Professor

Lisa D'Souza, Assumption University

Department of Education, Professor

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Copyright (c) 2024 Aubrey Scheopner Torres, Lisa D'Souza

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Authors retain copyright without restrictions. Unless otherwise indicated, from 2021 all articles are published under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license. For more information visit  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. Articles published prior to 2021 used a CC-BY-NC-SA license.

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Journal summary.

Current Issues in Education ( CIE; ISSN 1099-839X) is an open access, peer-reviewed academic education journal produced by doctoral students at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College of Arizona State University. The journal’s mission is to advance scholarly thought by publishing articles that promote dialogue, research, practice, and policy, and to advance a community of scholarship.

CIE publishes articles on a broad range of education topics that are timely and have relevance nationally and internationally. We seek innovative scholarship that tackles challenging issues facing education using various theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. CIE welcomes original research, practitioner experience papers, and submissions in alternative formats.

Authors wishing to submit a manuscript for peer review must register for a journal account and should examine our author guidelines . As an open-access journal, authors maintain the copyright to their published work. 

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