Ideologies toward CSL: SL perceptions in the 2025 Chinese Spring Festival Gala

China has been working on the Sign Language (SL) Translation of TV programs. Based on Loh's (2025a) theory of language ideology, this paper uses the accessible retransmission of the 2025 China Media Group Spring Festival Gala as a case study to explore online perceptions of Chinese Sign Language (CSL) among deaf and hearing Chinese. It combines quantitative analysis of public online comments about the CSL interpretation during the Gala with qualitative analysis of online feedback from deaf Chinese. This study finds that although the novel SL Translation improved the public’s impression of CSL and consideration of deaf people, issues of Chinese barrier-free construction and public misunderstandings of deaf people persist. These issues may relate to a lack of legal status and national standardization for CSL, combined with hearing-centered perspectives in the development of national policies regarding the deaf, which deserve deeper consideration in the improvement of Chinese barrier-free construction.