Jumping in here...
In January 2000 during
our Baby Anteater QB Tournament, one of the players
from Torrey Pines High School is deaf, and his team
brought with them an ASL translator. What I did was I
allowed the translator to stand behind me as I moderated
so she can look over my shoulder at the packet. She
needed to look at the text mostly because of the
spelling of words. I trusted her judgment not to give out
too much information as to give the student an
advantage. The student actually did answer a few tossups and
helped out a lot on the bonuses.
After the
tournament, the translator told me the only difficult thing
is all those proper names, which she literally had
to spell out letter by letter (her hands were
FAST!!).
Witnessing that student play was one of the most
inspirational moments I've ever experienced in quiz bowl (other
than the fact my high school team got butchered by
Brad Harris and his James Island team at the 1995 ASCN
tournament).
Willie Chen
UC Irvine College Bowl