Emergency Preparedness with People Who Sign

Part of the Baltimore County Fire Department EMS Academy training program.
Emergency Preparedness with People Who Sign
April 27, 2023
The workshop will educate emergency responders on Deaf community and its culture and incorporate basic American Sign Language (ASL) in their work to communicate with deaf people in emergencies. This will include understanding the basics of deaf population’s linguistic and cultural aspects and the different methods and simple techniques to use when communicating with deaf people who use ASL to communicate. This course will cover information to equip first responders with basic communication skills in interacting with and supporting deaf people in emergencies.
Training by,
Jody H. Cripps, PhD
Dr. Cripps is an Assistant Professor of American Sign Language in the Department of Languages at Clemson University. Dr. Cripps obtained his doctorate in the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching program from the University of Arizona. His research interests primarily focus on universal design and deaf people, signed music, signed language pathology, social responsibility, and ASL-English literacy pedagogical methods for deaf children. He is currently an Editor-in-Chief for Society for American Sign Language Journal.
Leyla Craig, PhD Candidate
Leyla Craig has been a practitioner in disability-inclusive disaster risk reduction (DiDRR) for the last ten years. She has been involved in local and international projects focussing on the inclusion and resilience of people with disabilities and disasters, with particular attention to Deaf Communities. Her work included a nomination for the prestigious 2019 United Nations Sasakawa Award for Disaster Reduction for best practices on inclusive DRR. As a PhD candidate in the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney and an active member of the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC), her research studies focus on the capacity of organizations to respond to and support Deaf Communities affected by disasters in the Asia-Pacific region. Currently, she works as a Disability Inclusion and Engagement Officer for Fire and Rescue New South Wales in Australia.