Currently, Covid-19 resources and information are mostly available in written text or spoken format. However, spoken language is inaccessible to the majority of Deaf people, and many Deaf people struggle to understand written texts.

With this in mind, a new project that aims to make information about Covid-19 available to the South African Deaf community was recently launched by the Department of General Linguistics in Stellenbosch University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

We speak to professor Frenette Southwood of the Department of General Linguistics, Stellenbosch University.