LabSigns Project Brings New Scientific Terms to American Sign Language

A laboratory can be a loud, bustling place. Instruments hum and clatter, computers beep, researchers chatter.

For Cooper Norris, the laboratory experience is a little different. As a Deaf researcher, Norris relies on other kinds of signals as he works. Flashing lights may signal a fire alarm, mirrors on hallway corners warn him of incoming colleagues, and American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters enable communication with other researchers. 

But limitations still arise. When talking about specific scientific terms or instruments, Norris and his colleagues might use ASL to fingerspell words, but that method can only go so far.

“Fingerspelling scientific terms can be a waste of time in translating, especially in a fast-paced working environment like laboratories,” Norris said.

During his time as a lab technician at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Norris also realized that his field of environmental science is almost entirely lacking ASL signs. So Norris, along with PNNL Earth scientist Kaizad Patel, is trying to change that. 

Their new project, called LabSigns, introduces more than 50 technical signs for environmental sciences that any scientist can use in and out of the lab. 

“Many Deaf scientists out there are still facing communication barriers at schools, institutions, and in the workplace, where they may not feel motivated or be able to keep up with their work,” said Norris, now a lab technician at CME Associates, Inc. “LabSigns could improve Deaf scientists’ experience by translating things more effectively for them so they can focus on their work.”

The need for science signs

Norris and Patel met in Patel’s environmental sciences lab in 2019. Patel learned letters and some basic terms in ASL, but when discussing certain instruments, methods, and scientific processes, it quickly became clear that relying on fingerspelling was not going to work in the long term.

“I realized within a few weeks after starting at the lab that there were so many scientific terms that had to be finger-spelled in our field of environmental science,” Norris said. “Signs would help things to be more effective in translating for me to follow what is happening.”

So Norris and Patel decided to start developing signs that would help them communicate with each other in the lab. They started with signs for instruments they each used frequently, such as a “carousel” sign for a carbon analyzer where samples of soil and water are loaded onto a rotating tray, or carousel. They also used already-existing signs for new meanings, such as “cube” for a cube-shaped instrument that analyzed other elements.

But the pair soon realized that these quick-fix signs were just a band aid slapped on a much larger problem: due to the lack of standard scientific signs, Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (D/HH) scientists were likely missing out on important opportunities in their workplaces.

That’s when LabSigns was born.

“We decided to start a list of signs we desperately needed and continued to do that with the LabSigns project,” Patel said.

Environmental sciences in ASL

As researchers studying nutrient cycling in soil, Patel and Norris decided to focus first on terms that were directly applicable, like the word “soil” itself. In ASL, the sign for “soil” is the same as for “dirt,” and many people use these two words interchangeably in English as well. But for scientists, these two words mean very different things. Soil contains organic matter, microbes, and other living things that create a nutrient-rich substance that plants and animals depend on—so much more than simply “dirt." So Cooper and Patel created a new sign that denotes grabbing a handful of material from the ground (like “grab a sample” of soil) and feeling it for texture, Patel said.

They also developed other relevant signs like “anoxia” (lack of oxygen), “autoclave” (an instrument that sterilizes soil samples under high temperature and pressure), or “wetland.”

Some signs were translated by combining two existing signs, such as “wet” and “land” for “wetland.” 

Others combine already-existing signs in a new way, such as putting together the signs for “oxygen” and “remove” to create the sign for “anoxia.” 

Autoclave was especially tricky. “It was difficult to combine ‘sterilize,’ ‘temperature,’ and ‘pressure’ into a single, simple sign,” Patel said. “It took a lot of iterations, but the final sign we agreed upon denotes ‘scrubbing’ the microbes from the soil, an action more intense than simply cleaning or sterilization.”

“Creating new ASL signs is not something to be taken lightly,” Norris said. Just like any language, ASL follows set grammar rules. To make sure their signs were grammatically and structurally coherent, Norris and Patel had many discussions with Norris’s colleagues at Washington School for the Deaf, where he worked when the project started, as well as with experts at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf.

More signs to come

Now that LabSigns has launched, Norris and Patel hope it will help foster a more inclusive space in all sciences for D/HH researchers. The team would also love to collaborate with other laboratories and researchers to continue growing their ASL dictionary of scientific terms.

“There are many different fields of science that don’t have D/HH scientists, so there was no purpose of having ASL in these fields. This pattern will continue until D/HH scientists enter more scientific fields,” Norris said. “LabSigns can hopefully pave the way for more D/HH scientists to participate in their field of science so more signs can be made for science in ASL. This would be beneficial toward the D/HH students in schools as well to pursue their passion in science.”

Learn more about LabSigns on PNNL’s website. Anyone interested in collaborating can reach out to Kaizad Patel (kaizad.patel@pnnl.gov).