Julie A. Hochgesang, professor and white sighted deaf linguist specializing in language documentation, is leading the project. She, like many members of the ASL communities during the pandemic, has been observing what kind of language and communicative practices have been used during the pandemic given that many of us are masked or online much more than before. She even wrote a Twitter thread in which she called video-meditated communication "emboxed discourse". She also saw archiving and documentation projects pivoting to represent communities' experiences during the pandemic and wanted to document the ASL communities and suggested her Fall 2021 Field Methods students focus on this. Happily, they agreed!

NB: Emily Shaw, associate professor, also led a course in Spring 2022 in which students used the O5S5 ASL data to conduct sociolinguistic research.