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10/10/2015  |   3:15 PM - 4:00 PM   |  Andrew Foster Auditorium

The ask and the task of hearing parents of children who are deaf learning Sign Language

Sign language enjoyed international revival and widespread acceptance in the late 20th century. The 1990s saw the introduction of the bilingual-bicultural approach in education of deaf children. Professionals were alerted to the benefit of communicating through sign language with individuals who do not have access to sound. This included interventionists such as Speech Language Therapists and Audiologists whose training underwent a change to include the shift. This paper examines the issues around hearing individuals’ use of sign language by tracing policy on South African Sign Language (SASL) in the education and health sectors, the preparation of professionals to use and teach SASL, and the access and use of SASL by children and their families. Studies done in South Africa are presented to highlight and discuss the challenges that parents and families face in accessing SASL, as well as accepting and using it. The acquisition of a visual-gestural language is often underestimated. This is especially important against the backdrop of late diagnosis of hearing loss in children and decision making around educational methodology. While old debates, prejudice and misconceptions about sign language continue to prevent optimal benefit from its use, a full understanding of signing within the context of hearing-deaf dialogue in families requires further exploration and understanding. Sign Language use has vast benefits, but mere acceptance of this fact is not enough to bridge the communication barrier observed between deaf children and their families. A structured approach to learning to sign that is contextual, communication centered, and relevant in the early years, fully cognizant of the unique characteristics of a visual language and its place when the auditory system is inadequate, would ensure that as deaf children grow, they do not outstrip their parents with an ever widening communication gap between the child and family.

• 1. Knowledge of the intricacies of matching policy and practice to learning of Sign Language by families of recently diagnosed deaf children
• 2. Awareness of the challenges faced by families trying to access sign language in a developing world context
• 3. Knowledge of sign characteristics and their influence on learning to sign within a multi-modal framework

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Neethie (Lavanithum) Joseph (POC,Primary Presenter), Audiology, University of KwaZulu-Natal, josephl@ukzn.ac.za;
Dr Joseph graduated as a Speech and Hearing Therapist in 1986 from the University of Durban-Westville (now the University of KwaZulu-Natal-UKZN). She has worked in both the departments of Health and Education in Durban, South Africa. She took up a lecturing position at UKZN in 1995 and is currently the Head of the Discipline of Audiology in the School of Health Sciences at UKZN-Westville Campus. She lectures in the areas of Paediatric Audiological Assessment, Aural Rehabilitation, Sign Language and Deaf Culture, and Research methodology. She is very involved in postgraduate research supervision, supervising both Masters and PhD students. Dr Joseph obtained her Masters degree in 1999 from the University of Pretoria in the area of communication between mothers and their children with hearing loss. She obtained her PhD also from the University of Pretoria, in the area of communication between signing deaf children and their parents. She has a special interest in the fields of Deaf education, Aural Rehabilitation. multimodal communication, and parent-child communication.