Visible signs of change: Scientific terms and concepts in Indian Sign Language are coming to the aid of hearing-impaired

Sumedha Sharma

How do you explain centrifuge in Indian Sign Language (ISL)? This was the simple question that a hearing-impaired student asked microbiologist Dr Alka Rao, who was visiting the School for Deaf Children in Gurugram in 2017. “We had no answer,” says Rao, Principal Scientist, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research’s Institute of Microbial Technology (CSIR-IMTECH), Chandigarh.

A team of CSIR-IMtech, Chandigarh, has created signs and videos in Indian Sign Language to explain scientific terms and concepts

The question, however, prompted Rao and her six-member team — Digvijay Singh, Hoshiyar Singh, Sakshi Sharma, E Theresa Arulvathy, Vivekanand Jaiswal and Navjot Singh — to start working on the Indian Sign Language Enabled Virtual Laboratory (ISLEVL), a project that won the prestigious International Zero Project Award 2024.

The project made Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education accessible to the auditory-challenged community in India. Rao, who hails from Hisar, brought together her research group and sign language specialists to broaden access to science for auditory-challenged students in the country. The team has created more than 100 signs in sign language to explain scientific terms, besides 500 videos to explain scientific concepts.

In India, 6.3 crore people have significant auditory loss. Very few opt to study STEM subjects due to the challenges they face, including the lack of sign language for specific terms.

“In 2016, I met a social worker who headed the Gurugram branch of the Haryana Welfare Society for Persons with Speech and Hearing Impairments (HWSPSHI). I learnt about the gaps in STEM education for the differently-abled. A majority of them are talented but don’t have resources to study these subjects. This milestone will open new avenues,” says Rao.

Besides winning the Zero Project Award 2024, the team was also selected for ‘Scaling Solution Fellows 2024’, a new global initiative under Zero Project where they identify and promote such innovations that have the potential to be implemented globally and are high utility interventions.

Beginning with holding science workshops for the hearing-impaired children in Panchkula and Gurugram, Rao started working on developing signs for inclusion in the ISL. She was joined by a hearing- impaired administrative assistant at CSIR-IMTech in Chandigarh. He apprised the institute of his struggles with adjusting to the workplace. Thereafter, IMTech conducted its first sensitivity and inclusion workshop, which was aimed at training employees on making appropriate accommodation for the hearing- impaired staff members.

The CSIR later offered a sensitivity workshop and a basic course in ISL at all its 37 laboratories around the country. The effort was soon extended to the CSIR outreach programme ‘Jigyasa’, which was aimed at generating curiosity among schoolchildren and motivating them to opt for STEM subjects in higher education.

Rao and her team got hold of all resource material of this programme and translated it into sign language. Soon, even hearing-impaired students came under the ambit.

“At first, our scope was limited to translation. But soon, we realised that ISL had almost no vocabulary for STEM words. If a sign is available in another sign language, such as American or British Sign Language, we can adopt or adapt it. Otherwise, we create new signs,” adds Rao.

In 2022, IMTech started the first ISLEVL project with three hearing-impaired sign language specialists. The team went on to visualise a concept and create signs that depict defining features of a scientific word. This might include its structural or functional features, topology or both.

The project has benefitted more than 10,000 online users, including school students and teachers of HWSPSHI centres, besides 2,500 offline users and 10,000 video subscribers, says Rao.

And the answer is...

After almost eight years, the team has finally found an answer to the student’s query on centrifuge. In ISL, a centrifuge sign is made by a rotating two-hand shape with extended index fingers, which is used to show centrifugal motion, followed by the right hand in a flat, horizontal hand shape to show the layers of particles separating and settling to the bottom of a test tube.

The team also went on to create signs for terms like ‘xylem’, a word rooted in Greek and Roman language, not just depicting a stationary structure but also the process of transportation in plants. Similarly, to describe ‘algae’, a hand shape for alphabet A (for algae) is joined with the waving fingers of the right palm representing movement in water.

“We have struck a chord with the auditory-challenged community, which has now started accepting STEM as a career option, but we strive for a bigger outreach in the scientific community. We aim at getting increased involvement of the scientific community in creating STEM signs and content,” concludes Rao.

The Zero Project

An initiative by the Austrian non-profit Essl Foundation, the Zero Project focuses on researching and sharing innovative solutions that support the rights of people with disabilities globally. The project publishes an annual report of innovative solutions for persons with disabilities, holds an accessible conference annually to share these solutions, and partners with other organisations to support innovators in scaling their solutions globally.

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