Bringing Sign Language Back to Martha's Vineyard

Made possible through community-based research, a team involving a professor and students from Clemson University and two residents of Martha’s Vineyard undertook a timely and insightful sign language proliferation endeavor. Understanding that the island was once home to a shared signing community (see Kisch, 2008 regarding the unique communities where deaf and hearing members know and use sign language and experience ease of communication), the team engaged in a project aimed at restoring signing and sign language to the island life. Although the island is no longer home to numerous deaf residents, Martha’s Vineyard can still become a sign language friendly community, catering to deaf tourists that visit the island and a small number of deaf people living on the island. The research team’s work includes creating a webinar to teach hearing islanders entry level American Sign Language and utilizes the concept of Universal Design (UD) for promoting widespread sign language use in communities and society at large (Cripps & S. Supalla, 2012; S. Supalla et al., 2012/2020). With the Martha’s Vineyard project, the research team embraced UD principles to help fulfill inclusion for deaf people. A total of 16 hearing islanders were recruited to participate in an interview procedure where they shared their comments and suggestions for changes to the webinar prototype. The team relied on the feedback to make improvements with the anticipation of having the webinar posted on the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce’s website.