Abstract:

Deaf students use sign language to communicate and they, naturally, experience difficulties when required to interact in a different language, like a spoken language. Spoken and sign languages are distinct in all their features. A deaf person cannot communicate fluidly in spoken languages. There is a general misconception that deaf people can read the text in their national spoken language, but this is often very difficult due to the differences in phonology, morphology, syntax, vocabulary, and channels of communication between sign languages and their spoken counterparts.

At the higher education level, deaf students do not have the same type of assistance they usually get up to secondary school; in higher education, they are constrained to communicate with their colleagues and teachers in their national spoken language; sign language interpreters are seldom available. The didactic materials and digital content are also mostly available in spoken language forms. These circumstances place deaf students in a disadvantaged scenario that seriously limits their chances to succeed and proceed to a professional career.

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of hearing-impaired students attending higher education across the world. To assure equity and give deaf students access to the same opportunities as the rest, including the chance to engage in international mobility during studies, we need to create ways for improved communication between deaf and non-deaf communities in international higher education settings.

In this paper we discuss the work done by a group of partners from five different countries under the frame of the InSign project – Advancing Inclusive Education Through International Sign – aiming to establish an infrastructure to promote the communication between deaf and non-deaf students and academics through the use of International Sign. International Sign is a simplistic form of sign language that is commonly used in large international events for deaf audiences like the annual conference of the World Deaf Association. Besides helping to tear down communication barriers in the classroom and educational settings in general, the project also aims to promote the use of International Sign to help with the international mobility of deaf students, an area that sees very little support in the present.

The main outcomes of InSign are a beginner’s course on International Sign, level A1, addressed to both deaf and non-deaf persons willing to learn the language, and an automatic real-time translator application, based on the VirtualSign sign language translation technology, to translate between International Sign and national sign and spoken languages. The VirtualSign technology uses a 3D avatar to perform sign languages from any nationality. At InSign we will extend this technology to include International Sign.

These tools will allow non-deaf and deaf students that use different languages to establish basic communication with each other with little time investment, regardless of their mother language.

Keywords:

Communication, International Sign, automatic real-time translator, international mobility.