Asif Iqbal says the internet has had a "big impact" on his life. At work, he likes to use email because it's a quick and easy way of communicating. Outside work he often uses internet cafes to check up on news and sports results. He also uses text messaging daily. In that respect, Iqbal is just like millions of young people for whom the internet is an integral part of life. For Iqbal, though, there's one major difference: he is profoundly deaf.
While the internet has affected most of us somehow, it has transformed the lives of deaf people, especially the young, by overcoming two barriers that make many deaf people feel isolated. One is the geographic barrier separating deaf people from each other: there are about 673,000 severely or profoundly deaf adults in the UK, spread all over the country. They can't just pick up the phone and talk (although the introduction of textphones has made communication easier.)
The other is the linguistic barrier that separates deaf and hearing people: many deaf people find speech difficult, and most hearing people don't understand sign language. Nearly all of us can read and write, however, and tech nologies such as email, instant messaging and chat rooms mean that deaf people can contact old friends and make new ones anywhere in the world. There are plenty of resources on the web specifically targeted at deaf people, such as www.deafclub.co.uk and www.deaf-uk.co.uk - a set of Yahoo-based discussion groups where lively debates take place.
Another language barrier, that which divides speakers of British sign language and American sign language, also melts away. The internet touches almost every aspect of life. It's much easier to shop online if you're deaf than to make a shop assistant understand what you want. Similarly, the educational opportunities of deaf people, few of whom go on to higher education, could be transformed by distance learning. Even more significant is the chance to work. "Email has the potential to revolutionise the employment prospects," says Nathan Charlton, a consultant at the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID). Email gives deaf people, who have twice the unemployment rates of hearing people, the ability not only to communicate with hearing colleagues easily, but to share in news they might otherwise be excluded from.
Certainly Asif Iqbal, a campaigns officer with the RNID, feels his career has benefited from being able to use the internet. New developments are taking place all the time. One recently launched RNID project is V-Cam (www.vcam.org.uk ), which combines instant messaging with a webcam. Although 56k modems are too slow to allow users to use sign effectively, the webcam enables them to complement text messaging with facial expressions, which are a very important part of communication for deaf people. The widespread adoption of broadband technology, which will finally allow users to sign over video links, is eagerly anticipated, says Charlton. Although text is a natural way of communicating for many deaf users, those who have been profoundly deaf since birth and use British sign language as a first language (about 50,000 people) often find the written word hard to understand.
One way being explored, through an EU-funded project known as ViSiCAST, is to make the internet accessible through avatars - human-like animations that use signs to communicate information. It's still early days. Although deaf people are finding that the internet enables them to do things they could previously only dream of, hearing people - especially employers - have yet to wake up to the difference it has made. When that happens, it really will revolutionise life for deaf people.
