This article addresses the issue of access to the written word for deaf people whose main lan-guage is sign language. We question the status of sentence processing in the acquisition of a writ-ten language by deaf people, visual beings par excellence. This written language is both the writ-ten form of another language (namely a vocal language) and another modality, that of writing (as opposed to oral form of language), which they have not experienced in their own, non-written language. We highlight two points in the literature that we feel are crucial to addressing this is-sue: first, the significant linguistic distance between their L1 (SL) and their L2 (written vocal lan-guage), which severely limits the possibility of positive transfer from one to the other; secondly, the evidence of a cognitive functioning specific to deaf people, marked in particular by higher pro-cessing capacities in the visual domain. Based on the results of two studies on the written output of deaf people, we suggest that particularities in the acquisition of the sentence are closely linked both to the structure of SL and to the visual functioning of this population. Finally, we emphasize the importance of using sign language as a metalanguage in teaching writing to deaf signers.