Wikipedia:WikiProject Deaf

Welcome to WikiProject Deaf!

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WikiProject Deaf is a collaborative community for people who are interested to improve articles related to sign languages, Deaf culture and deaf-related. You are welcome to post a notice on the Project talk page if you have any questions, suggestions, concerns, or anything related to Deaf- or hard-of-hearing-related articles. Click here to start a new discussion on the Talk page.

If you would like to assist with this Project, please feel free to add your name to the list below and start participating on this Project page. For more information on WikiProjects, please see Wikipedia:WikiProjects and Wikipedia:WikiProject best practices.

Feel free to tag Deaf- and Hard-of-Hearing-related articles, on their talk pages, by placing the following text at the top of the article's Talk page: {{WikiProjectDeaf}}.

Please do not write articles that advocate one particular viewpoint on deaf, politics, religion, or anything else. Understand what we mean by a neutral point of view WP:NPV before tackling/editing this sort of topic.
Be neutral. Citation is your gateway to allowing a sentence/paragraph in. Do not copy original text as-is; you must reword them as neutral and non-offensive as possible.
Neutral point-of-view is the primary goal of Wikipedia.

Roster

WikiProject Deaf Members

If you participate at Deaf/HOH-related articles, and would like to join this Project, please feel free to add yourself to this list.

Anyone can become a member of this project; all you have to do is add your name to the list and start participating on these pages.

You can add a WikiProject Deaf userbox to your userpage, by adding the following text to it: {{User WikiProject Deaf}}.

If you prefer not to use a userbox, you can add [[Category:WikiProject Deaf participants|Username]] to your userpage.

Either action will add you to Category:WikiProject Deaf participants. Welcome to the Project!

...add your name here

Goals

  1. To improve the overall quality of articles relating to sign languages, Deaf culture and deafness.
  2. To encourage collaboration and the formation of a community of Deaf, hard of hearing and interested Hearing wikipedians.
  3. To achieve a consensus from a wider group on what are sometimes controversial topics, emphasising a representation from Deaf/deaf and hard of hearing people.
  4. To improve the relevant content from all regions of the world.
  5. To integrate all the articles into a consistent classification schema (e.g. category hierarchies).

Projects

  1. (proposed) Sign languages and linguistics. Establish conventions for sign language pages and implement them (a draft page is now online at Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Template (sign language)). Give examples of different sign languages with images and video samples. Also, create a network of pages on sign language linguistics.
  2. (proposed) NPOV. Manage pages to insure that all aspects of deafness are addressed in a NPOV, i.e.- both medical and cultural.
  3. BSL Lives: add at least 50 new articles related to British Deaf people/BSL ([[[British Sign Language]]]) users in 2021
  • Formulate conventions on terminology ("hearing loss", "hearing impairment", hard of hearing, deaf/Deaf, hearing/Hearing, etc.) and apply throughout Wikipedia.
  • Discuss possible redirects and disambiguation.
  1. (in progress) Deaf Around the World. Create articles describing what life is like for deaf and hard-of-hearing people around the world. Supported in part by a WikiEdu partnership wherein university students create new articles as part of a course. As of 1/11/25, the following articles have been created:

Matthall.research (talk) 18:28, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Tasks

  1. Create articles from red links on list of sign languages.
  2. Develop examples/descriptions of Deaf culture in Deaf culture.
    1. list of films and literature
  3. Add {{WikiProjectDeaf}} at the top of the talk page of deaf related articles.
  4. Find pictures and videos of sign languages.
  5. Education:
    1. Deaf education: Simultaneous Communication, Total Communication, Manualism and oralism, Milan Conference, Bilingual-bicultural education;
    2. Deaf schools: Rochester School for the Deaf, Maryland School for the Deaf, E.C. Drury School for the Deaf
  6. Deaf history: Frederick J. Rose, History of sign language, Harlan Lane, Albert Victor Ballin
  7. Expand and maintain the article on recognition of sign languages.
  8. Expand Telecommunications Relay Service and replace its copyrighted images with free ones.
  9. Add more photos of technology marketed to/used by Deaf and deaf people (such as loop systems, hand-held caption displays, hearing aids, cochlears, etc) to Wikimedia Commons.

Templates

SyntaxNameUsage
WikiProject iconDeaf
WikiProject iconThis article is part of WikiProject Deaf, the WikiProject which seeks to improve articles relating to all aspects of deaf-related and Deaf culture. For the Project guidelines, see the project page or talk page.DeafWikipedia:WikiProject DeafTemplate:WikiProject Deafdeaf
???This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.
{{WikiProjectDeaf}}WikiProject Deaf Talk Page TemplateFor use at the header of all pages within the scope of the project.
{{User WikiProject Deaf}}UserboxFor use on contributors' userpages
{{Captions requested}}Video Captions Requested (VCR)In Wikimedia Commons, the place where Wikipedia videos are uploaded, to request captions in videos within the scope of the project.

Articles

Please add {{WikiProjectDeaf}} to the talk page of any article within the scope of WikiProject Deaf. Once you do, you can see it in the list of the articles in Category:WikiProject Deaf articles.

Articles in need of improvement

  1. Sign language
  2. International Sign (link to vocabulary or at least some example signs)
  3. Hearing loss
  4. Deaf culture
  5. Prelingual deafness
  6. Child of deaf adult
  7. Telecommunications Relay Service
  8. Subtitle (captioning)
  9. Closed captioning
  10. Sign singing
  11. Cued Speech
  12. American Sign Language literature
  13. Si5s
  14. South African Sign Language (the Linguistics section contains nothing about linguistics)
  15. American Annals of the Deaf

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Deaf#Open tasks for one example of how this section can be used.

Articles in need of assessments (grading)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Deaf/Assessment

Articles in need of creation

  1. History of Deaf Education or similar title, to explain residential schools, the fight over oralism, the politics of how it was decided what kids would be taught, etc. (My request, please move if in wrong place. BrainyBabe 13:11, 4 July 2007 (UTC))
    I went ahead and gave it a more concise title if that's okay with you. I may get to this if I have time in the future. Working for Him (talk) 00:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
    May I recommend that we break up Deaf history into one or more of the following focus
    --Egberts (talk) 19:35, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
  2. National Theatre for the Deaf just linked to on American Sign Language Literature. Definitely meets notability requirements. Docmcconl (talk) 03:50, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
  3. Articles linked from Laurent Clerc Award probably need to be created, as they are probably prominent and notable figures. Disavian (talk) 00:08, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
  4. American Indian Sign Language (AISL), which is considered an endangered language variety but is still used and learned natively by some members of various Indian nations across Canada and the United States (including the Assiniboine, Blackfeet/Blackfoot, Cherokee, Crow, Northern Cheyenne, Nakoda/Lakȟóta, and Mandan-Hidatsa). Adding this here after not finding this article to use as a link for John Louis Clarke. PigeonChickenFish (talk) 01:46, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
  5. American Indian Sign Language Conference, which was an August 4–6, 1930 conference at Museum of the Plains Indian, Browning, Montana to document the AISL language. This could be made into a single article with American Indian Sign Language, depending on the amount of history and sourcing. Currently this article exists only on Wikipedia in Czech, Sněm indiánských mluvčích znakového jazyka. PigeonChickenFish (talk) 02:03, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
  6. Deafness in LGBTQ+ or similar title, to explain the intersection of Deaf and queer communities, Deaf drag, list of influential Deaf queer individuals, organizations nationally supporting the Deaf queer community. (Kmak 32 8:55, 11 November 2022 (UTC))
    The articles could be broke up into the following
    • History about the Deaf community and LGBTQ community in generalDeaf culture#history
    • Deaf Queer Social Movements
    • Deaf Queer Resources and Institutions Deaf Culture#Deaf LGBT institutions
    • Deafies in Drag, with a section added on the Drag page as well
    • Deaf Queer Publications that include academic papers, memoirs, poetry
    • Deaf Queer Media, including films and art
    • Deaf Queer People: Nyle DiMarco, Chella Man, Drago Renteria, Josh Feldman, Socorro Garcia, etc
    --(Kmak 32 8:55, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
  7. Deaf Indigenous People in the United States (or a similar title, there is considerable documentation of Deaf indigenous life in the US as mentioned above.)
  8. Black Deaf People (or maybe Black Deaf Indentity) as Black Deaf people hold an intersectional identity and often use Black American Sign Language due to the culture developing separately
    Kachow03 05:49, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

References

  1. ↑ Davis, Jeffrey (2017-05-10). "Native American Signed Languages". Oxford Handbooks Online. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935345.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935345-e-42. Retrieved 2022-02-16.
  2. ↑ "American Indian Sign Language (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved 2022-02-16.
  3. ↑ Meadows, William C. (2015-09-22). Through Indian Sign Language: The Fort Sill Ledgers of Hugh Lenox Scott and Iseeo, 1889–1897. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-5293-6.

Category

Please note that the Wikipedians only want to see new categories that are 'notable'. The explanation at WP:OCTrivial is worth noting: "Avoid intersections of two traits that are unrelated, even if some person can be found that has both traits. For example, celebrities are usually notable for reasons other than being gamers." So while Marlee Matlin really is notable for being a deaf actress, people in occupations like astronomy or book binding are not, to choose two of the more extreme cases above.

Recognized content

Good articles

New articles

Did You Knows (DYKs)

Barnstar

Barnstar
The Deafness Barnstar

To use this Barnstar, create a new section on the user talkpage of the user you want to give the award to, and add {{subst:The Deafness Barnstar|1=message ~~~~}} to the talk page.

Formerly recognized content

Former good articles

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team release version selections

Parentage

This project's parents are WikiProject Culture, WikiProject Languages, and WikiProject Clinical medicine.

Sister Project Searches