The deaf audience for television

Broadly considered, research on television audiences has studied either effects (social, interpersonal, etc.) of the medium on viewers, or more lately, audience uses and gratifications. In recent years, these two perspectives have been applied to a number of specific audiences (e.g. blacks, women, elderly, mentally retarded, urban poor). Information about one particular audience, the deaf and the hearing-impaired, is scant at best. This article presents the results of an exhaustive search of the empirical literature from 1950 to 1978 on public and commercial broadcast television and deaf people.