Background During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a rapid increase in the amount of information about the disease and SARS-CoV-2 on the internet. If the language used in video messages is not clear or understandable to deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) people with a high school degree or less, this can cause confusion and result in information gaps among DHH people during a health emergency. Objective The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between DHH people's perception of the effectiveness of physical distancing and contagiousness of an asymptomatic person. Methods This is a cross-sectional survey study on DHH people's perceptions about COVID-19 (N=475). Items pertaining to COVID-19 knowledge were administered to US deaf adults from April 17, 2020, to May 1, 2020, via a bilingual American Sign Language/English online survey platform. Results The sample consisted of 475 DHH adults aged 18-88 years old, with 74% (n=352) identifying as White and 54% (n=256) as female. About 88% (n=418) of the sample felt they knew most things or a lot about physical distancing. This figure dropped to 72% (n=342) for the question about the effectiveness of physical distancing in reducing the spread of COVID-19 and 70% (n=333) for the question about the contagiousness of an infected person without symptoms. Education and a knowledge of the effectiveness of physical distancing significantly predicted knowledge about the contagiousness of an asymptomatic individual. Race, gender, and age did not emerge as significant predictors. Conclusions This results of this study point to the strong connection between education and coronavirus-related knowledge. Education-related disparities can be remedied by making information fully accessible and easily understood during emergencies and pandemics.

During natural disasters and crises, the deaf and hard of hearing community might not have full accessibility to all of the information shared with the larger hearing community. This could be due to the lack of awareness among social work professionals about these cultural and linguistic needs of this minority population. The purpose of this article is to explore the challenges faced by the deaf community and to discuss culturally and linguistically appropriate crisis intervention and mobilization to natural disaster situations based on the experiences of the Japanese deaf communities affected by the Kobe and Tohoku earthquakes.

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BACKGROUND During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a rapid increase in the amount of information about the coronavirus on the Internet. If the language used in the video message is not clear or understandable to deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) people with a high school degree or less, they can create confusion and information gaps among DHH people during a health emergency. OBJECTIVE To gather a baseline of DHH people’s perceptions related to effectiveness of physical distancing (PD) and asymptomatic individuals. METHODS A cross-sectional study of COVID-19 (N=445). Items included questions pertaining to COVID-19 knowledge were administered to US deaf adults from April 17, 2020, to May 1, 2020 via a bilingual ASL/English online survey platform. RESULTS The sample consisted of 445 DHH adults aged 18 to 88 years old, with 74% identifying as White and 54% as female. About 88% of the sample felt they knew most or a lot about PD. This figure dropped to 73% for the effectiveness of PD in reducing the spread of coronavirus and 72% for the contagiousness of an infected person without symptoms. PD awareness along with education were significant predictors of PD effectiveness (adj OR for PD awareness=5.00; 95% CI: 2.09, 11.95; adj OR for education=1.89; 95% CI: 1.13, 3.16). In a separate model, education and PD effectiveness significantly predicted knowledge of asymptomatic individual. Race, gender, and age did not contribute to both models for PD effectiveness and knowledge of asymptomatic individual. CONCLUSIONS This study results point to the strong connection between education and coronavirus-related knowledge. Therefore, the information that DHH organizations and public health agencies quickly disseminate information during emergencies and pandemics must be clear, contain adequate and reliable information, and are timely in concordance with other information being disseminated.

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