Welcome to the Ladder Lab website! The Literacy and Deafness Development Research Lab (LADDER Lab) is made up of a group of researchers based at the Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL) at UCL and City, University of London. We are interested in understanding how literacy and language skills are acquired, and investigating the underlying cognitive processes involved in literacy development.
We conduct internationally–renowned research into deaf and hearing children’s language and reading development and difficulties. Some hearing children and many deaf children have language delays and find reading challenging. It is important to understand how, and when, the language and reading processes can break down in order to devise effective interventions to remediate difficulties. As part of this work to identify difficulties, we have developed a range of assessments to measure language skills. We work with practitioners and other key stakeholders.
We have several exciting projects looking at language skills and reading development in children. Follow the links below to find out more.
Several of our team have been presenting our research findings at academic conferences in July. Dr Fiona Kyle gave a spoken conference presentation at the Society for the Scientific Studies of Reading (SSSR) 2026 conference in Rotterdam in July 2026. She presented on Morphological Awareness and Reading Comprehension in Deaf and Hearing Children. Read the…
We were thrilled to celebrate with two of our fabulous Ladder Lab graduates at the recent UCL MSc graduation ceremonies.
We kicked off our 2026 round of assessments with seeing some of our long-standing participants and their families down at the Elizabeth Foundation. It is the final assessment point for some of our children who we have been seeing yearly since they were 3 years old! We’re looking forward to seeing all participating children again!
The Ladder Lab 