Challenge

Perhaps you’ve never considered the difficulties for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, even with an interpreter or captionist present, in trying to learn from spoken directions or a demonstration. But directions/demonstrations often involve pointing at different items –for example in a lab setting, or indicating steps to be followed on a computer screen.

Deaf and hard-of-hearing students are expected to look at two places at once: first they look at the interpreter or captioning if available (or you if they are speechreading), and second they look at the object of the directions.

Strategies

A few simple procedures will make this process clear for deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

• Describe each step of a process or technique before performing it, and then pause to allow students to shift their attention.

• Then take the step yourself, without comment.

• Repeat this procedure throughout the process of giving directions or a demonstration.