Abstract
Social Networking Sites (SNSs) impact on deaf and hard of hearing people (D/HoH) and characteristics of deaf people in Jordan were investigated in this paper. The main purpose of this paper is to show whether deaf people can effectively use and communicate through SNSs. To this end, a questionnaire was used to find the preferences and experiences of deaf people on SNSs. It was distributed to 138 deaf people. Furthermore, some demographic characteristics of the sample were discussed in the paper. This survey shows how SNSs are integrated with deaf people as a communication tool and the positive impact resulted from using them. It was found that Arabic sign language is most frequently used more than any other communication mode. In addition, they communicate with individuals with hearing loss using sign language more often than using written and spoken language. It was reported that they used SNSs once or more times per day. Furthermore, the most used SNSs website is Facebook, then WhatsApp comes second. Smartphones are used more frequently than any other devices. Last but not least, they use SNSs to exchange photos and watch videos more often than any other purposes and this is highly related to their reading and writing skills.