Smart Safe Signing

SmartSafeSigning: Deaf Inclusion in Domestic Violence and Abuse Support and the Criminal Justice System

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Catalyst Award funding has been awarded to an interdisciplinary team in the Faculty of Arts Business and Social Sciences (FABSS) for a two-year project named ‘SmartSafeSigning: Deaf inclusion in domestic violence and abuse support and the Criminal Justice System.’ The project launched on 1st Feb 2025.

The project will look at how technology can help facilitate a more practical process of access to support and the Criminal Justice System (CJS) for deaf victims of domestic violence and abuse (DVA). The project will explore whether deaf victims, police and professionals supporting such victims feel interpreter-technology would be useful or indeed, desired by the parties involved. Additionally, it will also look at the potential role and impact of new uses of technology within this context.

Dr Karlie Stonard, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Dr Christopher Stone, Reader in Interpreting and Translation, both from the University of Wolverhampton, along with an ex-colleague from the University, Dr John McDaniel (now Lecturer in Crime and Criminal Justice at Lancaster University), will be working with local domestic abuse support services including Women’s Aid, West Midlands Police and SignHealth (a national deaf charity).

Dr Stonard said: “A key finding from our pilot study exploring practitioners’ experiences of supporting deaf victims of DVA was that victims and survivors often experience significant delays in access to the CJS. Victims are frequently met with communication barriers which result in delays in access or progression through the CJS which can often be explained due to a lack of deaf awareness or the limited utilisation of interpreting services which should be a statutory provision. Our current project seeks to expand on this by exploring the role, use, strengths and limitations of technology in facilitating access to such services. The funding will allow us to expand and strengthen our research by continuing to work with our partners as well as partnering with West Midlands Police. We hope to expand the current project by also reaching out to direct victim-survivors of DVA who are either deaf or British Sign Language (BSL) users.”

We are currently in the process of recruiting two part-time Research Associates who will support all stages of the research project and are due to start in early May 2025. We look forward to welcoming them to the team.