For hospitals and healthcare

Consent you can't read isn't consent.

Signed: International Sign — pending How this page is tested

A Deaf patient reaches your front desk. Triage, consent and discharge instructions all arrive in writing — in a language that is not their first one. The chart says informed. The patient is not.

Talk to us How we handle patient data

This page in sign language

For Deaf patients, and for the staff who meet them. International Sign for the global site; your national sign language on your country page. Signed by a Deaf creator, credited by name.

International Sign Captions + transcript ship with the video. Read this instead

The problem, in your words

Writing is not a shared language here.

In plain words

Many Deaf people do not read well. That is not about ability — it is about schooling that never came in a language they could see. So written consent forms, written discharge notes and written triage questions do not reach them. Sign language does.

Most hospitals reach for written notes, a family member, or an interpreter booked days ahead. The first two are not clinical-grade. The third does not exist at the hour a patient actually arrives.

A family member should never be the interpreter for a diagnosis.

In the United States, across three decades of national testing, the median reading score of deaf and hard-of-hearing students never rose above a fourth-grade level.

Receipt: Qi & Mitchell, Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 17(1) (2012); Traxler (2000)

The World Federation of the Deaf estimates that as much as 90% of the world's Deaf children and adults have never been to school. Its 93-country survey found that only 23 countries provide bilingual education in sign language and the national language, and then only in some schools.

Receipt: Haualand & Allen, Deaf People and Human Rights, WFD (2009)

430 million people live with disabling hearing loss — projected to reach 700 million by 2050.

Receipt: WHO

What we do for you

Sign language at the moments that carry risk.

  • The front desk

    A Deaf patient reaches a signing person on screen, in their own national sign language, without booking ahead.

  • Consent and discharge

    The forms your legal team already approved, carried in sign language and audio description alongside the text — not instead of it.

  • Standing information

    Ward signage, pre-op instructions, public advisories: recorded once by a Deaf creator, reused everywhere.

Recorded sign language does not replace an interpreter in a consultation room. It covers the enormous amount of routine content no interpreter was ever going to be booked for — so interpreters go where only a person will do.

What deployment looks like

One department, measured, then the rest.

  • Budget pocket. Accessibility compliance, not innovation — the obligation already exists and is usually already funded.
  • Instrument. A city ordinance, a health-department directive, or your own patient-rights policy.
  • Start. One service line — outpatient, emergency reception, or discharge — with the numbers published rather than described.

Compliant isn't the same as understood.

Proof from a peer

Two city ordinances — one on healthcare accessibility, one on cinema accessibility — have passed first reading, with as technical partner.

Receipt: Parañaque City Council records

One of those two is a healthcare-accessibility ordinance, with as technical partner. It is a first reading, not a finished deployment, and this page will say so until that changes. Which city, and what the law requires, is on that country’s page.

Trust

Patient moments are the most sensitive data we could touch.

So we say plainly what is in place and what is not yet. A hospital should never have to infer either.

Read Trust & security

Nothing on this website sets a cookie, runs a tracker, or sends your reading to us. Your display and language settings stay on your own device.

Clinical deployment terms — retention, access control, and who may see a recorded session — are written per engagement and reviewed with your data-protection officer before anything goes live.

Next step

Tell us which department, and we will tell you what it takes.

Talk to us