About this site

This ICT dictionary is aimed at deaf students, their Communication Support Workers and interpreters, and anyone else interested in learning signs for ICT terms.

Deaf professionals and BSL specialists have now come together to translate terminology used in ICT, and you can see these signs at this website.

Signs were not created but were found by interviewing individuals or groups of deaf professionals and looking at signed TV programmes (SignZone, See Hear, etc.). On completion of the research, a panel of 'critical friends' evaluated them to check that they were culturally and linguistically appropriate. Only those signs deemed appropriate by the panel have been included. However, we could not always find a commonly agreed sign for a word, and therefore these terms have not been included.

The context of the signs is very important. There can be more than one meaning for one word and, therefore, a different sign. The signs shown in the videos only relate to the meaning given in the definition and cannot be used for words which are written the same but have different meanings.

There may be regional variations of the signs featured. Please check which is the commonly used sign in your area and use that sign.

There are three ways to search the dictionary: A-Z at the bottom of each screen; the keyword search at the top of each screen; and by clicking a subject on the left hand side. The video clips can also be downloaded and saved locally for use offline. For more information on how to search the site, download individual video clips and copy information from the site, download the documents on the right hand side.