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About RISE

RISE stands for

Reading Involves Shared Experiences

We aim to promote language acquisition and early literacy skills for deaf children by providing parents, early intervention specialists, professionals in the education field, or anyone interested in deaf education with tools such as eBooks and YouTube videos. By engaging in shared reading, deaf children and adults can strengthen the parent-child bond that impacts many other aspects of a child’s life. These bimodal-bilingual stories are designed to delight both deaf children and the adults they share these stories with, regardless of their signing ability.

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Gallaudet University and Swarthmore College have been collaborating on RISE since 2013 under the guidance of Prof. Gene Mirus and Prof. Donna Jo Napoli. All stories feature a deaf signer native to the various sign languages from around the world. Our ASL stories are signed and filmed by Gallaudet students/alumni. RISE eBooks and videos are produced by students from Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore Colleges and the University of Pennsylvania unless otherwise specified. Our eBooks and videos are produced by unpaid volunteers. RISE is grateful for past support from the Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation and continued support from Gallaudet University and Swarthmore College.

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The original RISE website was designed by Bekah Seidl (Gallaudet '18). It was redesigned by Kimiye Maeshiro in 2021 (Bryn Mawr '23).

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