Deaf employees in workplace education classes arrive with a variety of these prior educational experiences and may have trouble learning the material. This is not only because they require an interpreter, but also because their learning, as well as their reading and writing skills are different than what might be expected by trainers. One must be sensitive to this fact. Boeing, as a company, has accepted that this population may require a different instructional strategy for these very reasons.

Many Deaf people have prior educational and subsequent life experiences that put them at a distinct disadvantage when compared to their hearing counterpart. Nevertheless, they do have many strengths, and these should be used to the advantage of all. Deaf learners are highly visual, very interactive, and respond well to examples as a way of expanding concepts. Viewing Deaf students from the perspective of their strengths benefits everyone.

American Sign Language (ASL)

ASL uses visual symbols and is carefully structured to rely on the needs and capabilities of the eyes. This, therefore, points out the obvious – Deaf people process information visually.

ASL is a visual-gestural language created by Deaf people and used by approximately half a million Deaf Americans and Canadians of all ages…The units of ASL are composed of specific movements and shapes of the hands and arms, eyes, face, head and body posture. These movements or gestures, then serve as the “words” and “intonation” of the language…Since ASL uses body movements instead of sound, “listeners” or receivers use their eyes instead of their ears to understand what is being said. And because all linguistic information must be received through the eyes, the language is carefully structured to fit the needs and capabilities of the eyes.^{Footnote 3}

ASL is a complex and completely natural language. It is the first language of many Deaf individuals. While its written form is English, it is very different from English. For example, in English we have verbs that carry markers, which give us a time reference. I run fast (present). I ran fast (past). I will run fast (future). ASL does not have verb tenses, but instead relies on subtle changes in eye and hand positions. There are countless other differences between the structure of English and ASL, which are too varied to mention here. ASL is a language that relies heavily on body movement, hand shape, and facial expression.

Another point to remember is that Deaf people are reading printed material in a language different than the language they use to communicate and, as such, instructors must be aware of the extreme difficulties required to do this task. For example, think of receiving all of our printed information in Japanese, especially when we use English as our first language and our language of oral communication.

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