Australian Deafblind Signing Corpus

The Australian Deafblind Signing Corpus  is a collection of digital video recordings and associated annotations of approximately 25 hours of interactions with at least one deafblind signer. The data includes 21 conversations between two deafblind signers, six deafblind-deaf conversational dyads and videos from workshops with seven deafblind participants discussing their language practices.

The Corpus documents and describes the distinctive ways in which signing deafblind Australians modify Auslan (Australian Sign Language) so that signing can be followed by touch thereby enabling deafblind Australians to communicate. This enables safeguarding of this language resource, supports language learning and supports the ongoing development and documentation of the language.

This Corpus is available for access by researchers attached to a tertiary institution via the Language Data Commons of Australia (LDaCA) website, which seeks to make nationally significant language data available for academic and non-academic use.

Application & benefit

The Australian Deafblind Signing Corpus seeks to create a societal benefit and impact through:

• This resource will aid in informing interpreter and support worker training. For people who are deafblind and rely on tactile Auslan to communicate misunderstandings and confusion can often arise around contextual information - such as the location of objects in the word or how their communication partner is reacting to what is being signed. The Corpus provides a machine-readable record of deafblind signing in situ that facilitates analysis of what successful communication looks like in this modality.
• Significantly advance  knowledge of how deafblind people use Auslan and made a major contribution to knowledge on tactile signing globally;
• Contribute to understanding of touch as a previously underexplored language modality;
• Support the growing number of professionals who are  competent to work with deafblind signers and helps address the extreme workforce shortage we see in this area

The Australian Deafblind Signing Corpus research was funded  by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council.

Authors

Associate Professor Louisa Willoughby
Linguistics & Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Monash University
louisa.willoughby@monash.edu

Publications

An extensive list of publications have appeared from this resource. 
For a summary and more information about the technical specifcations of the Corpus see https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07268602.2024.2380672 (open access)

Questions?

The Australian Deafblind Signing Corpus  is provided under license from Monash University and may be used only in accordance with the provisions of the agreement.

If you have any questions about the licensing of this innovation email innovation@monash.edu.

Access may be requested via Language Data Commons of Australia (LDaCA) website.