The production of appropriate subtitles for the deaf and the hard-of-hearing (SDH) require a clear understanding of who the target audience is. The main British national channels have reached in 2009 a subtitling target of 80% to 100% of the programmes broadcast, and base their subtitling practices on the ITC Guidance on Standards for Subtitling (1999), which resulted from research mainly carried out in the early 1980s. Very little research has been conducted on subtitling for deaf children in the UK – or elsewhere for that matter -, it is clearly outdated and it does not consider the full potential of digital technology. Although more extensive research on the reading characteristics of deaf children has been conducted within Deaf Studies, the two disciplines – i.e. Audiovisual Translation (AVT) and Deaf Studies – have developed independently from each other. This paper bridges the gap between AVT and Deaf Studies in an attempt to gain a comprehensive picture of deaf children’s reading characteristics and abilities.