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This paper examines reasons of pragmatic functions' misinterpretation of three types of Facebook hashtags: long, short and multiple mixed hashtags.

Focus group interviews of 15 English language learners, who are also active users of Facebook and hashtags, are conducted. Thematic analysis is performed through the software Nvivo for arriving at reliable findings.

The findings show that unknown vocabulary in contents and lowercasing in long and short hashtags are major factors that cause misinterpretation. Also, the symbol of underscore and appropriate usage of upper and lowercasing of alphabets should be adopted in hashtag writing for the improvement in communication and successful conveyance of the intended meaning.

This paper contributes to the online hashtag writing style by finding reasons for the misinterpretations of different types of hashtags. Hashtags have been developed for adequate communication (Livingstone, 2012), but in Pakistan, hashtags are practiced as a “fashionable” trend and thus result in misinterpretation and inadequate communication among readers even of the same background (Tariq and Sarfraz, 2018). Moreover, this study focuses on the trend of hashtagging that is common among university students and particularly second-language learners because they are active users of Facebook and adopt the latest trends quickly.

The current study aims to determine the viability of the tool developed by Abbas and Sarfraz (2018) to translate English speech and text to Pakistan Sign Language (PSL) with bilingual subtitles.

Focus group interviews of 30 teachers of a Pakistani private university were conducted; who used the PSL translation tool in their classrooms for lecture delivery and communication with the deaf students.

The findings of the study determined the viability of the developed tool and showed that it is helpful in teaching deaf students efficiently. With the availability of this tool, teachers are not dependent on human sign language (SL) interpreters in their classrooms.

Overall, this tool is an effective addition to educational technology for special education. Due to the lack of Sign Language (SL) understanding, learning resources and availability of human SL interpreters in Pakistan, institutions feel dependency and scarcity to educate deaf students in a classroom. Unimpaired people and especially teachers face problems communicating with deaf people to arrange one interpreter for a student(s) in multiple classes at the same time which creates a communication gap between a teacher and a deaf student.