The project Sign Language Acquisition, Annotation, Archiving and Sharing (SLAAASh) is a model for working with diverse ASL Deaf communities in all stages of the project. In this presentation, I highlight key steps in achieving this level of collaboration. First, I discuss the importance of sharing work with the community—a key form of reciprocity recognized by Deaf community members. Second, I discuss the importance of reflecting diversity, e.g., ensuring that ASL Signbank actors vary in age, gender, ethnicity, body type, and language experience. Third, I discuss the importance of incorporating feedback from stakeholders and show how the ASL Signbank actors have expressed different views that have impacted our development of the Signbank. Finally, I discuss the crucial component of building substantive community connections and maintaining them long-term. I end by discussing our own efforts to build community connections to date as well as planned future ones.
Keywords
Language documentation and long-term accessibility for sign language data
@inproceedings{hochgesang:18049:sign-lang:lrec,
author = {Hochgesang, Julie A.},
title = {{SLAAASh} and the {ASL} Deaf Communities (or ``so many gifs!'')},
pages = {63--68},
editor = {Bono, Mayumi and Efthimiou, Eleni and Fotinea, Stavroula-Evita and Hanke, Thomas and Hochgesang, Julie A. and Kristoffersen, Jette and Mesch, Johanna and Osugi, Yutaka},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the {LREC2018} 8th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Involving the Language Community},
maintitle = {11th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation ({LREC} 2018)},
publisher = {{European Language Resources Association (ELRA)}},
address = {Miyazaki, Japan},
day = {12},
month = may,
year = {2018},
isbn = {979-10-95546-01-6},
language = {english},
url = {https://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/lrec/pub/18049.pdf}
}