The “Spread the sign – 360” is a big project. It cover 14 countries with a total population of 425 million of the continents total 740 million people. There is a deaf person born in every 1000 new-borns. Total in the 14 countries there is 425.000 deaf citizens. Sign language is not an international language that can be used everywhere with everyone. That is why there is a need for the sign language dictionary Spread the Sign that gather each country’s individual sign language and show it in a standardized pedagogic way, free of charge on the web and in mobile apps. This project is truly vocational and innovative. A large number of 360-degree images will be photographed in each country. In each 360 photo there will be numerous objects visual that in this project will get a hotspot and connection to the right sign language video in the dictionary. The vocational students and their trainers will get an amazing visual tool for understanding the objects context and origin as well as an easy way to locate and learn its sign and to get the vocabulary for their education. To learn your own language, even if you are deaf, is a human right. However, in many of our partner countries, national online dictionaries have never been developed by those who should do it for their deaf citizens, namely the governments or other national institutions. The dictionary www.spreadthesign.com has been doing that through EU-funding’s since 2006, and has already had nominations by the European Commission as Best Practice project. In the “Spread the Sign – 360” project there is a big economic advantage and a running start, as the sign language dictionary is already developed and widely implemented on our partner countries, from earlier EU-funded projects. Therefore, we will now implement a new innovative feature based on the paste work, that consists on the visual 360 degree photo feature, which will gain very large impact instantly since the dictionary already has a large amount of daily users within the vocational schools of Europe. Our dissemination activities will enable this impact and will increase the use of this dictionary as a pedagogical and learning tool. With our work, we seek to contribute to the expansion of educational and lifetime horizons for deaf vocations pupils and other deaf pupil, as well as to provide important tools for teachers of deaf and, ultimately, to contribute to social inclusion, to increase the levels of literacy and social participation of deaf people. The Spread the Sign dictionary aims to do this on a 360 degree, more and more, throughout the European and World.
The main aim of the project was to provide the deaf vocational students from all over Europe with a fully accessible visual tool to acquire better language and communication skills in both, spoken and sign language, within their profession of education – and through this also to potentiate the students’ cognitive skills and facilitates coping in the work and study environments in general. A total of 420 360-degree images were photographed in each 14 partner country in a wide diversity of vocational and work environments, form very practical to highly academic ones. In each 360 photo numerous profession specific objects were captured , that got a clickable hotspot and connection to the corresponding videos in the partner countries’ sign languages. All the photos were added to an already existing online educational tool - an international sign languages` dictionary Spreadthesign (www.spreadthesign.com). Spreadthesign is a free visual sign language dictionary on the web that started out as a Leonardo pilot project in 2006 and today it inholds more than 580.000 sign language videos from 40 countries all over Europe and beyond. Sign languages are different all around the world and there do not exist any other dictionaries of the kind, where so many different sign languages with such a huge number of entries are presented. That is why there is a need for creating, maintaining and developing further the sign language dictionary Spreadthesign. The second project aim was to support the educational needs of deaf Slovakian students by adding 15.000 sign language videos in Slovakianto the Spreadthesign dictionary and make the Slovakian Sign Language accessible to the native users of it as well as everyone else who needs to learn it as a foreign language. Adding the 360-degree photo feature to the online dictionary is truly vocational, visual and innovative, created for the deaf vocational students and their trainers, but also to all the other specialists, co-students and colleagues who need to communicate with the deaf people in any kind of professional or educational setting – this also applies for student exchange situations, where the deaf need to cope in a foreign language environment. Due to the hearing loss, the unfavourable growing-up environment (as 95-98% of the deaf children are born to the hearing parents, who don`t know any sign language themselves to be able to support the development of their child enough) and limited access to information and communication, the deaf are a disadvantaged group in need of better language skills. The 360 will facilitate their integration process to the vocabulary of their future work life, as well as their educational opportunities by helping them to learn the vocational sign language and the professional spoken language which they struggle to acquire due to the hearing loss and tend to have a huge backlog in compared to their hearing peers. Some of the general objectives were: 1) To support the social inclusion and integration of the deaf and raise awareness. 2) To provide equal educational opportunities to deaf and people with hearing disabilities from partner countries. 3) To support vocational trainers in their work with deaf students with a freely accessible and easy to use tool. The specific objectives were: 1) To enrich the on-line visual dictionary Spreadthesign with video recordings of the Slovakian Sign Language. 2) To offer an open, modern and advanced platform on the web (www.spreadthesign.com), and App, for sign language learning, to people all over Europe. 4) To organise National Conferences to spread the project's products and results. These fourteen transnational partners with the relevant, but also complimentary experience, carried out the project successfully: - European Sign Language Center in Sweden - Mert Öztüre Special Education Vocational High School in Turkey - UNIVERSITAET KLAGENFURT in Ausria - Savez gluhih i nagluhih grada Zagreba in Croatia - Vyssi odborna skola, Stredni skola, Zakladni skola a Materska skola, Hradec Kralove In Czeck Republic - Kuulmispuudega Laste Õpetajate Selts in Estonia - Rheinisch-Westfälisches Berufskolleg Essen in Germany - UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA In Italy - Kauno kurciuju ir neprigirdinciuju ugdymo centras in Lithuania - Polski Zwiazek Gluchych Oddzial Lodzki in Poland - UNIVERSIDADE DO PORTO in Portugal - DeafStudio in Slovakia - UNIVERSIDAD REY JUAN CARLOS in Spain We also got an added value to the project with three partner countries from the Eastern partnership - Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, who joined this Erasmus project too via Swedish Institute funding’s and their Baltic seed projects.