Sign Language Incorporation in Chemistry Education (SLICE): Building a Lexicon to Support the Understanding of Organic Chemistry.

Historically, deaf and hard-of-hearing students (D/HH) who solely rely on an interpreter during organic chemistry lecture courses at the Rochester Institute of Technology consistently performed below the average in the class. A barrier attributed to this D/HH student performance is the lack of standardized methods in sign language to effectively communicate the organic chemistry terminology. As such, our group worked to address this challenge through a deliberate effort to develop a lexicon of insightful signs/classifiers that convey organic chemistry vocabulary as well as descriptive expansions to demonstrate challenging concepts.