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Managing editor Professor Graeme Kennedy said the project had developed the most advanced computer database in the world for analysing and recording sign language.

Turn the light on, so I can hear what you're saying. It's an old line, but a favourite one among us hearing-impaired people, because it points up how we "hear" with our eyes as surely as blind people "see" with their fingers or their ears.

For the first time in their lives, Pam and Kay, who are profoundly deaf, can talk to each other by telephone. The Combined Societies for the Deaf is hoping to get telephone-type equipment in airports, police stations, taxi offices and emergency service switchboards.

The starting equipment to be used at the Queen Elizabeth II complex is far more sophisticated. It uses a traffic-light type devised by a Christchurch man, Mr Ted Gilliver.

A deaf student has been left feeling hurt after he was cast aside and forgotten about following a fire drill in a university building. Had it been a proper fire emergency, he would have been in serious danger, he said and wanted to see strobe light alarms installed.

Deaf people are angered and disappointed by the threat facing the TV show News Review.

A shortage of sign language interpreters means as many as 7700 deaf people are struggling to access services in their communities.

Few people with normal hearing stop to consider the daily frustrations faced by the deaf.

For most of the week, the deaf in New Zealand are shut off from the television communication the rest of us take for granted. But for half an hour each Sunday, they can join the rest of the world, through a special programme called News Review.

Deaf students have the right to equal access to tertiary education but who will pay for sign language interpreters?

TVNZ says that several hundred pages of detailed information can be made available and rapidly selected by the viewer. The information ranges from frequently updated news and weather, both national and regional, to travel and consumer and social services media.

Deaf and hearing-impaired Kiwis are about to get a lot more choice in what they watch on television thanks to closed captioning being introduced on 10 new channels.

A television documentary on the plight of a deaf man has spurred the Glen Eden-based New Zealand Association of the Deaf into action. It wants to see the man, wrongly imprisoned for two years, receive compensation for his ordeal.

A significant step for New Zealand's deaf community has been taken this week. The country's first permanent sign language interpreters' course began on Monday at the Auckland Institute of Technology. At present there are only four official interpreters servicing New Zealand's more than 24,000 deaf people. Sixteen students from around the country started the two-year course this week.

A revolutionary device which opens up a whole new world for those born deaf is now being demonstrated in Wellington. New Zealand is the only second country in the world to adopt the system so far.

Teaching for almost 50 years has proved a rewarding career for Terry O'Brien, who has witnessed the development of deaf education. He has seen the transition of deaf education from an emphasis on teaching verbally and through text, to an emphasis on Signed English then NZSL in the 90s.

An interview with Abbie Twiss on World Deaf Awareness Day, and the start of New Zealand's National Deaf Awareness Week. Here, Abbie looks out from her Elam studio. "My thoughts go much faster than I can write." 

A Northland advocate is behind a campaign to get deaf-friendly fire alarms installed in public buildings, after a deaf university student was left behind during a drill. Whangarei's Kim Robinson, chairman of Deaf Action New Zealand, is driving the petition to make visual fire alarms - similar to what many deaf people have in their homes - mandatory in public buildings.