Crowdsourcing Site Compiles New Sign Language for Math and Science
From: ScienceBlog.com - 12/10/2012

US and European researchers are developing sign language versions of
specialized terms used in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)
fields, such as "light-year," "organism," and "photosynthesis." The effort
builds on a University of Washington project, launched in 2008, that uses
crowdsourcing to enable members of the deaf and hard-of-hearing community to
build their own sign language guide for STEM terms. "The goal of the forum is
to be constantly changing, a reflection of the current use," says Washington
professor Richard Ladner. In addition, with funding from Google and the US
National Science Foundation, Ladner helped launch the ASL-STEM Forum, an
online compilation of signs used in STEM fields that is similar to Wikipedia.
"The goal was to have one place where all these signs could be," Ladner says.
The site lists 6,755 terms from biology, chemistry, engineering, math, and
computer science textbooks. Ladner hopes a recent article in the New York
Times outlining the effort will spur interest and encourage people to suggest
more entries among the remaining terms. "I hope ASL-STEM Forum helps more
deaf students become scientists and engineers," Ladner says. 

Read the entire article at:
http://scienceblog.com/58384/crowdsourcing-site-compiles-new-sign-language-for-math-and-science/

Links:
"Pushing Science's Limits in Sign Language Lexicon"
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/science/sign-language-researchers-broaden-science-lexicon.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Science Signs
http://www.rit.edu/ntid/sciencesigns/

Richard Ladner
http://www.cs.washington.edu/people/faculty/ladner/

ASL-STEM Forum
http://aslstem.cs.washington.edu/