Abstract:

Many deaf Austrians have only a limited command of English, due to barriers in the educational system. The situation is even worse with English for special purposes, especially in the vocational sector, as there are few accessible resources. As many deaf people use a national sign language as their first or preferred language, multimedia resources (especially including sign language videos) are ideal for this target group that is scattered all across the countries.

SignMedia SMART (http://www.signmediasmart.com/) is a follow-up project to the Leonardo project SignMedia (2010–2012; http://www.signmedia.tv/) which provided an English course for deaf professionals working in the media. SignMedia SMART is a two-year Leonardo project (2013-2015). It is coordinated by the University of Wolverhampton (UK) with other partners from the UK (Mutt and Jeff Pictures Ltd., Bellyfeel Ltd.), Austria (Center for Sign Language and Deaf Communication, Alpen-Adria-Unversitaet Klagenfurt), Italy (Alba) and Sweden (European Sign Language Centre).

SignMedia SMART provides a glossary of 500 media terms on a mobile platform. In this way, Deaf media specialists can access the resource in studio, out on location and generally on the move. The mobile application provides a comprehensive glossary of media terms in English/British Sign Language, Italian/Italian Sign Language, German/Austrian Sign Language and Swedish/Swedish Sign Language. The users can access the glossary for free and look up the signs as well as the respective written words. There are different ways of searching for a term: Via an A-Z index, via the different stages of production or with a simple search function. All glossary items are combined with pictures for visualisation.

SignMedia SMART serves to enhance the inclusion of Deaf media specialists in the European media industry and will help to improve their career prospects across Europe.

Keywords:

Sign language, deaf, multimedia glossary, media professionals.