Page 246 - Reading Between the Sign Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters

Glossary of Terms

ADA—Americans with Disabilities Act. This federal civil rights law
prohibits exclusion of people with disabilities from many
areas, including employment and transportation.
ASL—American Sign Language, a visual language used by Deaf
people in the United States and parts of Canada.
Classifiers—A category of signs in ASL that can serve as pronouns
as well as show the actions and locations of people, ani-
mals, and objects. They may also be used to describe the
size, shape, and texture of their referents.
Closed-Captioning—The process by which some television pro-
grams and video rentals are made accessible to deaf people
who have a separate or built-in decoder for their TV sets.
They can turn on the captions (which function like sub-
titles in foreign films) and read what is being said.
Cochlear Implant—A controversial surgical procedure in which a
wire is implanted in the inner ear and a receiver under the
skin. It allows some people, especially those with a recent
loss of hearing, small to moderate gains in hearing sounds.
Controversy stems from Deaf people’s outrage when hear-
ing parents have their young children implanted (without
the child’s consent).
CODA—Hearing children of Deaf adults. Their first language may
have been ASL, and they may therefore culturally identify
with Deaf culture or a mixture of Deaf and mainstream
American hearing cultures.

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