Since the vocabularies of STEM disciplines are often not used in the common vernacular of the ASL community, interpreters, teachers and tutors are forced to create technical signs for these words or concepts ad hoc, which may result in signs that lack both semantic accuracy and specificity. In educational settings, these technical signs may also be different from one course to the next, and from one instructor to the next. For the deaf or hard-of-hearing student, this is extremely problematic and interferes with the acquisition of knowledge.

To address these concerns DeafTEC, with the support of a gift from The Dow Chemical Company, has developed this STEM ASL Dictionary under the stewardship of Geoff Poor, Professor of American Sign Language (ASL) at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) in Rochester, NY. In the video to the right, Geoff explains the purpose of the dictionary, how it was created, how it works, and who it is for.

Please note that, like all dictionaries, this is a work in progress. It is a start but is not exhaustive. We invite you to email suggestions for additional terms and other improvements to aslstem@rit.edu.

This project has been funded in part by The Dow Chemical Company.