Medical and health signs are being recorded here at the Medical Signbank sub-site with a view to assisting deaf people and their interpreters to better deal with interpreter-mediated medical encounters.
The issue — a perceived lack of Auslan vocabulary in the areas of health and medicine causing difficulties for deaf people and their interpreters in health care situations
One part of the solution — conduct linguistic research with Auslan users to improve information about Auslan signs and make this information accessible here at Signbank. Signbank allows the deaf community and Auslan interpreters to provide feedback on the signs they use.
The research program
- observe language use by deaf people and their interpreters in medical settings
- analyse information from focus groups discussing health related vocabulary
- conduct on-line surveys of deaf people, interpreters, and medical and health-care workers
- identify existing health and medical signs in Auslan on Medical Signbank
- identify English health and medical terms that have no sign provide a video explanation in Auslan on Medical Signbank
- collect new sign vocabulary in health and medicine from deaf people and Auslan interpreters and display them on Medical Signbank
- encourage feedback on new and existing signs from Auslan users accessing Signbank
- reflect community feedback in the way signs are displayed on Signbank