This study explores and describes the experiences of hearing children growing up in Deaf Parented families in Gauteng. The specific objectives of the study were to explore the delegation of different roles including South African Sign Language interpreting in the family; the influence of having Deaf parents in occupational choices of hearing adult-children of Deaf parents; the availability of support services to CODAs and their perceptions of their parents in terms of disability. A purposive sampling strategy in conjunction with snowball sampling was used to identify and recruit participants. Two males and eight females between the ages of 21 and 40 years, with different occupations were recruited for this study. A qualitative design, embedded within the constructivism and interpretivism framework was used in this study. Data were collected through semi structured; open ended and in-depth interview questions were used to obtain data for the study. A pilot study was conducted prior to commencing with the main study. Thematic content analysis was employed to describe themes qualitatively. The following themes emerged from the study. Participants reported to have developed a bicultural identity; however, they primarily identify themselves as CODAs regardless of their racial identity. Participants expressed frustrations with the interpreter role and female children reported to have interpreted for their parents more than their male counterparts. Seven participants are currently employed as SASL interpreters. The study highlights that there are mixed emotions regarding interactions with the extended family members. The study identifies a strong need for support services for Deaf parented families. Lastly; participants viewed Deafness as a cultural minority, and not a disability. Findings revealed a need for audiologists to clearly define their role in Deaf parented families, and to also adopt emic view of Deafness and family system perspective model.

Facial and head movements have important linguistic roles in American Sign Language (ASL) and other sign languages and can often significantly alter the meaning or interpretation of what is being communicated. Technologies that enable accurate recognition of ASL linguistic markers could be a step toward greater independence and empowerment for the Deaf community. This study involved gathering over 2,000 photographs of five hearing subjects, five Deaf subjects, and five Child of Deaf Adults (CODA) subjects. Each subject produced the six universal emotional facial expressions: sad, happy, surprise, anger, fear, and disgust. In addition, each Deaf and CODA subject produced six different ASL linguistic facial expressions. A representative set of 750 photos was submitted to six different emotional facial expression recognition services, and the results were processed and compared across different facial expressions and subject groups (hearing, Deaf, CODA). Key observations from these results are presented. First, poor face detection rates are observed for Deaf subjects as compared to hearing and CODA subjects. Second, emotional facial expression recognition appears to be more accurate for Deaf and CODA subjects than for hearing subjects. Third, ASL linguistic markers, which are distinct from emotional expressions, are often misinterpreted as negative emotions by existing technologies. Possible implications of this misinterpretation are discussed, such as the problems that could arise for the Deaf community with increasing surveillance and use of automated facial analysis tools. Finally, an inclusive approach is suggested for incorporating ASL linguistic markers into existing facial expression recognition tools. Several considerations are given for constructing an unbiased database of the various ASL linguistic markers, including the types of subjects that should be photographed and the importance of including native ASL signers in the photo selection and classification process. / 2019-06-30T00:00:00Z