Google recently hosted a competition with the goal of using artifical intelligence (AI) to recognize American Sign Language (ASL). The competition attracted nearly 1,000 individual programmers and 175 teams. It ran for a month. Hoyeol Sohn, a single programmer from South Korea, won the top prize of $100,000. In a discussion with Sohn, he explained that he believes the AI code would be able to recognize EEG signals, which is the pattern of brain activity that appears while fingerspelling.

The Institute of British Sign Language (iBSL) announced it is closing down as result of governmental policy changes and decreased income during the pandemic. iBSL is a Deaf-owned and Deaf-led certification-awarding organization that began as an idea during the British Deaf Association in 2004, and became a company in 2007. In 2009, it was accredited by a government agency to certify BSL skills qualifications.

In northern New Zealand, over 20 students at the Moerewa School in Northland participate in “Language Days” which is a big deal for Deaf children in a rural area and is often the highlight of their month! Some people drive two hours to attend so their Deaf children get a chance to meet their peers, play and learn together. The meetups are trilingual, a mix of English, Maori and New Zealand Sign Language, creating a fully accessible Deaf community comfort zone.

The EUD 2023 General Assembly was held recently in Stockholm where they discussed the 2022 Annual Report, 2022 Financial Report, their plans and programs for attaining employment and funding in 2023. There were also proposals on different topics such as minor sign languages, personal assistance for the Deaf, the rights of Deaf children, the rules of conduct in International Sign. There were lots of discussions and new ideas presented. The next conference will be in Estonia.

In May, Germany hosted the European Ninepin Bowling Championship which was attended by participants from Austria, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Croatia, Serbia and Germany. Croatia brought home the most medals. Also in May was the European Judo Championship held in Sofia, Bulgaria. Ukraine and France received the most medals.