Supporting Sign Language Users of Web-Based Applications: A Feasibility Study

摘要

This paper described the work performed jointly by the University of Durham and the Council for the Advancement of Communication with Deaf People (CACDP) to migrate training and assessment courses for communication skills with deaf people to web based applications. Communication difficulties felt by deaf or hard of hearing members of the community lead to numerous problems including social isolation. Within the UK as a whole there is often desire or necessity to communicate with the deaf but there is a lack of experienced trained teachers to be able to train the hearing community to appropriate skilled levels where easy communication is possible. Furthermore, most of this training must be provided, within people's leisure time so the training needs to be flexible and fun. This project through the use of web based-materials will seek to reduce this training need gap. The main objective of this paper is to promote discussion on the topic of using the Internet to promote awareness of the communication difficulties of the deaf. The approaches to be adopted will be described within this paper, as will some of the some of the preliminary results obtained for early software feasibility studies. Some early conclusions are finally drawn regarding the direction in which the joint project will take.