Deaf-focused social network launched

by Dan Leahul, Brand Republic 18-Dec-08, 10:15

LONDON - A new social network for the world's deaf community called MyDeafLife.com has gone live this week, acting as a platform to showcase deaf-focused content and services.

MyDeafLife.com offers a social networking and commercial opportunity for the deaf community, as well as access to online learning, video entertainment and deaf-focused content.

Members will also have access to British and international sign language recaps of the latest news, sports and health information, as well as deaf-focused radio and television channels.

The new site welcomes material from deaf citizen-reporters from anywhere in the world for consideration as content.

Susie Grant, founder and chief executive, said: "The new venture is a commercial one and I am confident MyDeafLife.com will work for both our team and the deaf community.

"Commercial organizations don't realize that their products and services are often not accessible to most deaf people -- simply because they have never addressed this market in a medium that the deaf community can access.

"For the first time, deaf people can understand in their own language, a whole new range of possibilities and those commercial organizations that use the MyDeafLife.com facility can start to build relationships with a substantial new market."

A majority of the website's staff are deaf.

About 9m UK residents are classified as deaf and 500,000 use British Sign Language as their first language. MyDeafLife estimates there are more than 1bn in the deaf community around the globe.

Comments

Dan Williamson - 18/12/2008

I found some problems with this website. On some pages I found the videos to be too small to read the finger spelling. It could be improved by giving users the option to expand the video or make it full screen. Also, some of the closed captions on videos aren't very clear because they don't contrast enough with the background video. But overall it's a brilliant idea. I expect it will benefit from user feedback as time goes on.