1. University of Wolverhampton
  2. Research
  3. Smart Safe Signing
Photograph of three students in the Business School conversing through sign language.

Smart Safe Signing

SmartSafeSigning:

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


Logo for Arts and Humanities Research Council

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 have welcomed our talented and friendly Research Associates - Dr Sukhpreet Kaur and Ellie Martin (BSL user) who will support all stages of the research project. 

For more information or to get in touch, please email Karlie or smartsafesigning@wlv.ac.uk.

 

 

More Information

We are now recruiting participants - please see the Participant Recruitment section below for information or scan the QR code to express interest.

If you are a D/deaf domestic abuse survivor, an IDVA (Independent Domestic Violence Advisor), a Police Officer, or Interpreter, and have experience of supporting D/deaf victim-survivors of domestic abuse we would love to speak with you. Please scan the QR code to get in touch with a member of our experienced and friendly research team.

QR code for BSL-using/facing participants:

QR code for hearing participants:

 

We attended the RAD On Tour Event on Friday 28th November 2025 in London - see 'Events' below for updates on this.

 

We will be applying to present at the next British Deaf Association (BDA) DeafEXPO event in May 2026 

Watch this space! 

View our latest paper here, based on our pilot study findings informing the SmartSafeSigning Project:

Stonard, K. E., Stone, C., McDaniel, J., Sadlier, S. and Williams, D. (2025) An Illusion of Inclusion: Charity Workers’ Views on Police Responses to D/deaf Victims of Domestic Abuse. Journal of Family Violence, [online] Available online.

We are currently working on our second paper from our pilot study:

Communication Exclusion as Systemic Violence: A Social Harm Perspective on Deaf Survivors of Domestic Abuse

Please get in touch via e-mail if you have any questions.

We Are Recruiting Participants Now!

Please see our Participant Recruitment Posters below for further information about our project and planned interviews with survivors and professionals supporting them.

SmartSafeSigning poster for D/deaf survivors, IDVAs etc.

SmartSafeSigning poster for IDVAs and Police

We will be attending Deaf Day organised by City Lit on 11th April (London)

 

We will be attending the BDA EXPO event in May (Birmingham)

 

We will be attending and presenting TWO papers at The British Society of Criminology (BSC) Conference in July (Nottingham) 

 

We attended the RAD On Tour Event on Friday 28th November 2025 in London.

Brief Report: Smart-Safe-Signing Project Promotion at RAD Event

An outreach activity was conducted at a recent RAD (Royal Association for Deaf people) event to promote the Smart-Safe-Signing project. The event attracted three other stallholders—all video interpreting providers (Convo, Sign Solutions, SignWow)—and was supported by five BSL interpreters.

Valuable conversations were held with interpreters experienced in domestic abuse (DA) cases affecting the Deaf community. Two have agreed to support our project:

  • One interpreter with specific court experience in DA cases.

  • Another, highly engaged with Sign Health, helps manage a peer group of interpreters and DA survivors. She has agreed to circulate our project poster within this network.

Both contacts are likely to provide interviews and help raise awareness among Deaf service users.

Additional engagement highlights:

  • BSL learners attending the event agreed to distribute project information within their networks.

  • A manager from HMRC took project material to share with her team for further dissemination.

  • A lead from RAD referred us to Safer Places, a Hertfordshire and Essex charity supporting an increased number of Deaf clients affected by DA. Safer Places acknowledged the need for specialist guidance; contact has been initiated for potential collaboration.

The event reinforced ongoing sector challenges in supporting Deaf DA survivors and identified new avenues for awareness-raising and collaboration.

Dr Christopher Stone presented our SmartSafeSigning research at the IDGS conference in June 2025

Researchers from the AHRC-funded SmartSafeSigning project were honoured to be invited by Professor Dr. Liona Paulus of the Centre for Deaf Studies (IDGS) at the University of Hamburg to present some of their preliminary findings.

The project is led by Principal Investigator Dr. Karlie Stonard, recipient of the prestigious Catalyst Grant. Dr. Stonard is joined by Co-Investigators Dr. Christopher Stone (University of Wolverhampton), Dr. John McDaniel (University of Central Lancashire), and senior mentor Professor Laura Caulfield (Director of the ICRD at the University of Wolverhampton).

As a signing member of the team, Dr. Stone—a Reader in Interpreting and Translation—delivered the presentation in sign language to the audience in Germany. Both deaf and hearing attendees expressed keen interest in the experiences of service providers, especially regarding the unique challenges faced by members of Deaf communities in recognising different forms of domestic abuse and the delays encountered in accessing both third sector and statutory support.

A key area highlighted was the need for service providers to better accommodate deaf individuals by ensuring timely access to qualified sign language interpreters, particularly those experienced in DVA services. This is essential to ensure that deaf experiencers of DVA receive support equivalent to that available to hearing individuals.

The IDGS team commented that it was refreshing to engage with research focused on the lived experiences of Deaf communities, as their own work typically centres on linguistic aspects. The SmartSafeSigning team looks forward to returning to Hamburg to share further findings as the research progresses.

Meet our experienced and friendly academic team working on the SmartSafeSigning Project:

Dr Karlie Stonard, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, University of Wolverhampton 

Dr Christopher Stone, Reader in Interpreting and Translation, University of Wolverhampton 

Dr John McDaniel, Lecturer in Criminal Justice, Lancaster University

Dr Sukhpreet Kaur, Research Associate, University of Wolverhampton 

Ellie Martin, Research Associate, University of Wolverhampton 

 

Project Partners