In this project we will reach out to all deafblind pupils in the schools and the people who are working with them. The background is, that to communicate with a person with deafblindness you need to know sign language. Sign language is not the same all over the world so each national sign language has to be used, and much communication goes through sign language interpreters. The problem we want to solve in this project is that not all information can be passed through the sign language. Since the deafblind person cannot see or hear those things that is going on in a school environment, the deaf and blind loose information that is obvious to us who can see and hear. There is a solution to that problem. Some people in some countries are using social haptic signs, with success, to be able to get more information in the comminuication. Those signs (social haptic) are additional to the sign language and placed on the back or on the arm of the user. The social haptic signs gives the deafblind information that is obvious to us, who don´t have this condition. For example: • Description of persons, moods and atmospheres • Description of surroundings and rooms • Directions • Colours • Food and drinks • Warnings, etc The problem is that those social haptic signs are not widely used and not spread around enough. Four European countries want to gather all social haptic signs in use, in each country, among the users in this project. Then we will categorize them, record them on video, photo and illustrate them, in order to make them accessible free on a website, for people to learn from. That website spreadthesign.com is widely used by the deaf and their educators as well as sign language interpreters. Those people who are very important for the communication with the pupils and students with deafblindness. With our work, we seek to contribute to the improvement of the education for pupils with deafblindness, as well as to provide important tool for teachers and interpreters. Ultimately, we want to contribute to social inclusion and participation of people with deafblindness in the schools of Europe. We have the ultimately tool to reach out and get full impact at the dissemination. We have a sign language dictionary that is used by 19 EU member states and also covers Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Turkey. This project will also helps us cover the sign language of Finland too, which is a minority language in Sweden and Estonia and needs to be accessible.
In many countries, there is no easily found information, materials or courses provided on haptic (SH) communication, which is used by deafblind people. Also there is no (or not enough/sufficient) Finnish Sign Language materials that can be accessed through a number of other sign languages. This makes it difficult to learn and use these signs effectively and causes irregularity in educational practices, which in turn does not support the development of the deaf/deafblind individuals. With this project we aimed to create a freely accessible platform with ~300 SH signals in Etonian, Italian, Portuguese and Swedish, and make 15 000 words/sentences available for learning in the Finnish Sign Language. We expect our work to make a significant impact particularly on the inclusion and on the knowledge of how to communicate more effectively with the mentioned target groups all around Europe and beyond as our material can and will most likely raise the awareness and interest of the Spreadthesign dictionary users from a variety of different countries. We expect our provided examples and general principles to be used as a base for creating and improving similar signals or materials in any other language.
The project was applied for to support the deaf and deafblind individuals in learning, communication and information acquisition due to the following main reasons: - the communicational and linguistic needs of the deaf/deafblind are often not recognized; - the lack of adequate support decreases the possibilities of the target group for social, educational, cultural or economical participation, resulting in low self-esteem, economic struggle, unemployment, educational dropout and isolation; - there is a shortage of materials and overall knowledge/skills for dealing with the target groups; - the Finnish Sign Language was one of the few EU languages missing in the Spreadthesign dictionary (www.spreadthesign.com), while being a minority language in 2 of the participating countries - Sweden, Estonia. By producing videos, photos and descriptions on social haptic signs and videos in Finnish SL, directly and indirectly, the needs of thousands of people were addressed. Our developed tools provide conditions to enhance better communication and interaction contexts, ease the teaching/learning process as well as contribute to social inclusion, better management in everyday life and personal cognitive development of deafblind/deaf people.