Ila Parasnis' primary interests concern vision, visual cognition, and bilingualism in deaf people, especially the influences of deafness and knowledge of ASL on the development and organization of visual perception and visual attention skills; information coding and memory processes in deaf and hearing ASL-English blinguals; self-identity and group-identity issues for deaf bilinguals and their relevance for the education of deaf people, and the use of technology in the classroom to improve learning and retention of information by deaf students. Current research topics include differences in the control of visual attention in deaf and hearing people, identity issues in bilingual signers, teacher-implemented use of personal captioning technology in the classroom to facilitate deaf children's language and cognitive skills, and development of a new test for early detection of retinitis pigmentosa in deaf students.