Question: Watching various COVID-related briefings, I notice there is always a sign language interpreter. This is clearly necessary, yet thinking about all the conferences I've attended in the past, literally none of them have had a sign language interpreter.

How do conferences work for deaf scientists? Do deaf scientists simply not attend conferences? If so, how does one even work in fields such as computer science where conferences are an integral part of the academic experience?

Answer: 
I am neither a deaf scientist nor an organizer for conferences. However, I was a student and staff member at a university with a significant deaf population so I'll speak from that perspective.

The prevalence of interpreters and other accommodations for those with disabilities varied significantly. It was a given that American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters would be present at large scale events and presentations aimed at the community as a whole. Additionally, interpreters would be provided for deaf students taking classes taught in spoken English.

Beyond that, it was usually the responsibility of the deaf person to arrange for an interpreter; though many interpreters were employed by the university, there was no guarantee one would be available on short notice. This may explain why I seldom saw interpreters at club meetings and other smaller events, especially those that emphasized spontaneous direct communication. For example, interpreters were present at the anime club where much of the activities involved watching Japanese animation with subtitles, but I did not see any at the club for tabletop role playing games where interpersonal interaction was constant.

In short, students and staff had the accommodations necessary to fulfill their primary goal(s) but often not enough for secondary ones, such as socialization. I suspect a similar dynamic applies to scientific conferences.

Conferences that regularly have deaf people attending likely organize interpreters themselves but the rest will only provide accommodations when requested. (In other words, at a typical conference, you're not going to see an ASL interpreter unless there's at least one deaf person present!) The effectiveness of such accommodations are apt to suffer if the organizers lack experience and/or resources. This would discourage deaf people from attending unless the conference was essential - for example, a topic of particular interest is being discussed or a colleague is in need of material or moral support - or had a positive reputation of proper accommodations.

In summary, the attendance of deaf scientists at conferences is presumably dictated by the following:

* The importance of the conference to the individual deaf scientist
* The presence and quality of accommodations that enable deaf scientists to be productive
* The number of people with whom the deaf persons can readily communicate with
* Each deaf scientist's personal comfort level with attending conferences designed primarily for hearing people
In spite of what Anonymous Physicist says, conference can work for deaf scientists. This is the case in my own area of work, digital accessibility.

There are two main methods to make conferences accessible for deaf attendants:

1. **Sign language interpretation**: this means that a sign language interpreter translates the spoken words into sign language. If the conference is a local or national event, the sign language interpreter will translate into the national sign language, e.g. American Sign Language (ASL), British Sign Language (unrelated to ASL), German Sign Language, etc. However, if the conference is an international event, there won't be sign language interpreters for each of the nationalities represented in the audience. In that case, sign language interpreters will translate into [International Sign](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Sign). Sing language interpreters take turns every 20-30 minutes. It is also helpful if they know in advance what the talk will be about, so they can prepare for it.
2. **Live transcription into text**: the talk is transcribed live and the transcription is displayed on a large screen at the front of the conference room. The transcriber can be physically at the conference or connected remotely. The transcription is in the same language as the talk.

For congenitally deaf persons, sign language translation is preferable, since that represents translation into their native language (except if the translation is into International Sign), whereas written language is essentially a foreign language.

Research into sign language avatars has been ongoing for quite some time, but I have never seen them in action at conferences.

The above is about deaf scientists in the audience. What about deaf scientists giving a talk?

In 19 years of research in accessibility, I have seen this only once. It was a congenitally deaf researcher from Finland who gave a talk in English. His pronunciation was only marginally harder to understand than that of many other non-native speakers of English, i.e. something one could get used to within minutes. The only issue was that he did not know how loud he was talking, so he asked he wasn't talking to loud. After feedback from the audience, he started talking less loudly.

(The conferences I am referring to include [ICCHP / International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs](https://www.icchp.org/), where translation was into International Sign, the e-Accessibility Forums in Paris (transcription), events organised by the Swedish organisation Funka/FunkaNu (transcription) and conferences organised by EU-funded projects in the domain of digital accessibility.)