HandsOn uses web technologies to present videos of stories signed in American Sign Language (ASL) along with English translations of the stories. Based on earlier software that focused on teaching reading and writing skills to deaf children proficient in ASL, HandsOn is an innovative reading and writing program that combines ASL with English in a variety of learning contexts. It affords students a unique opportunity to interact with English and ASL in the context of these reading and writing tasks, avoiding standard pitfalls of dictionary approaches to learning the correspondences between the two language. The reading and writing tasks require students to interact alternately with English and ASL using sentence contexts.

The original HandsOn project began in 1986 in collaboration Carol Padden of the University of California, San Diego. In 1992, HandsOn was honored as a National Merit Winner in the Johns Hopkins National Search for computers to Assist Persons with Disabilities. Although teachers in many schools for deaf children had used ASL as away of communicating with children, the earlier software was one of the first attempts, and the first using computer technology, to deal with the question of how the two languages should be systematically combined as part of a language instruction program. Teachers in our study noted that HandsOn directly engaged the deaf students and motivated them to engage in reading and writing.

The current web version of HandsOn takes advantage of those field test results and extends the goals not only to improve English language literacy among deaf children, but also to promote learning of ASL. Feedback from teachers suggested that the software would be helpful in the acquisition of ASL by professionals who work with deaf students. In addition, we are extending the software for use with deaf children for whom ASL is not a native language.