Deaf in Uganda

People Name:	Deaf
Country:	Uganda
10/40 Window:	No
Population:	485,000
World Population:	49,660,750
Primary Language:	Ugandan Sign Language
Primary Religion:	Christianity
Christian Adherents:	84.74 %
Evangelicals:	0.00 %
Scripture:	Portions
Online Audio NT:	No
Jesus Film:	No
Audio Recordings:	No
People Cluster:	Deaf
Affinity Bloc:	Deaf
Progress Level:

Introduction / History

According to 2005 estimates by the World Health Organization, 278 million people worldwide have moderate to profound hearing loss in both ears. In Uganda, more than 260,000 people are Deaf.

Deaf and hearing are like oil and water, if you leave them alone, they will separate. Many Deaf leave their biological family and join what they call their "Deaf family."

Many hearing people tend to think the Deaf are not very intelligent because of the communication barriers, as well as the speech patterns Deaf exhibit. Many Deaf people feel hearing people oppress them and purposely withhold information from them. There is very little "mixing" of the core Deaf community with the hearing community.

Sign language vocabularies are very different from one another, but they are also similar in many ways.

The difficulty with being Deaf is not the inability to hear, but the great barrier to communicating with the surrounding dominant culture, especially as related to acquiring information. Deaf children with hearing parents are the only ones in the world who do not learn language from their parents.

Since most Deaf do not communicate with their hearing parents or religious leaders, they do not follow any religion. The goal of DOOR (Deaf Opportunity OutReach), SIL and The Seed Company is to produce a chronological "primary" Bible consisting of 110 stories representing about 8.5% of the Bible. All are anxiously awaiting the publishing of this condensed signed language Bible on DVD and Web streaming.

If JAARS is successful in developing inexpensive and easily used animation soft-ware this would be a huge blessing to all sign language translation. Having a Bible in sign language will finally give the Deaf the materials they need to transform Deaf.