Super Typhoon Hato hit Macau in 2017, causing a number of casualties and disastrous loss in the societies. With the lack of sign language interpretation from TV news released by the government, deaf people in Macau were unable to access crucial information regarding situations that happened outside as well as emergency measures. According to the recent reports of the United Nations, the death rate of people with disabilities in disasters is 2-4 times higher than that of normal people as the disaster warning systems and the prevention measures in many places fail to cater for the special needs of the disabled people. In Macau, there has been a lack of a systematic or official channel to publish information related to disasters with Macau Sign Language as the medium. Although the Macau government has been planning to launch projects on the related issues, a lot of work and effort from different parties and domains are required to respond to the need of the deaf communities.

With the support of Galaxy Entertainment Group Foundation, the Project on Documentation of Macau Sign Language: Disaster-relief Online Platform (hereafter The Project) has been implemented since January 2018. This project is developing an online platform with educational sign language videos explaining concepts related to disastrous contexts and disaster-relief information with the aims as follows:

1. to provide a fully accessible medium, i.e.,sign language, for the Deaf community in Macau to obtain disaster-related information in order to increase their awareness of disaster prevention and ensure that they have the equal right in information accessibility with other people in Macau;
2. to provide a systematically organized and publicly accessible sign language online platform for reference to sign language interpreters and sign language related organizations as a reference of disaster-related sign language vocabulary and expressions