  Social media platforms support the sharing of written text, video, and audio.
All of these formats may be inaccessible to people who are deaf or hard of
hearing (DHH), particularly those who primarily communicate via sign language,
people who we call Deaf signers. We study how Deaf signers engage with social
platforms, focusing on how they share content and the barriers they face. We
employ a mixed-methods approach involving seven in-depth interviews and a
survey of a larger population (n = 60). We find that Deaf signers share the
most in written English, despite their desire to share in sign language. We
further identify key areas of difficulty in consuming content (e.g., lack of
captions for spoken content in videos) and producing content (e.g., captioning
signed videos, signing into a phone camera) on social media platforms. Our
results both provide novel insights into social media use by Deaf signers and
reinforce prior findings on DHH communication more generally, while revealing
potential ways to make social media platforms more accessible to Deaf signers.
