According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 466 million people worldwide have a disabling hearing loss, 34 million of which are children. They estimate that by 2050, the number of people with disabling hearing loss could rise to 900 million people. In Belgium, since July 2019, a decree allows deaf students to continue their learning in mainstream education until the end of secondary school in bilingual classes where lessons are given both in French and in sign language. However, the word “Deaf” only refers to those who cannot rely on oral speech at all, whereas technological innovation currently allows more and more hearing-impaired students to use hearing aids and cochlear implants, which means that they don’t always need to rely on sign language for communication anymore. The French speaking deaf Belgian federation (Fédération Francophone des Sourds de Belgique) estimates that around 13% of hearing-impaired individuals use sign language for communication which means that 87% of hearing-impaired people still need a different solution such as hearing aids and cochlear implants. This situation is reflected throughout the EU. The “Manifesto on Hearing Loss and Disability” (2017) by The European Coalition on Hearing Loss and Disability states that attending mainstream education with early cochlear implantation allows 44-66% of deaf students to attain age-appropriate reading scores. Nevertheless, these solutions are often not enough for them to hear as clearly as a hearing person, especially in noisy environments. Classrooms are a blatant example as they are often rather noisy, and their settings aren’t always adapted to the needs of deaf students. Lip-reading is one of the most used techniques to overcome this, but it is often incomplete since many sounds look very much alike on the lips. For instance, in French, only 30% of spoken language can be understood solely from lip-reading. At school, this can create a significant barrier to the acquisition of important skills and knowledge, especially since classroom settings don’t always provide the best environment for learners to successfully read on their teacher’s lips. As hearing-impaired students no longer exclusively attend special schools, teachers in mainstream education still need more tools to meet all their students’ needs. Transnational collaboration in this project is crucial in order to develop common methods and approaches. This process fits the current desire of several associations and federations such as the NCSA and the ALPC to form an International Committee for Cued Speech to standardize, update and modernize the trainings, use the IPA, and foster collaboration between the different Cued Speech organizations, centralizing and increasing the access to the materials. Goal of the project Our project aims to promote Cued Speech, a very simple technique for the hearing impaired to use with their families, friends, trainers, and teachers. It is a lip-reading accompaniment technique allowing them to understand spoken language, when used by the majority of people around them. Its French adaptation uses 5 positions around the face to represent 16 sounds-vowels and 8 configurations of the hand representing 21 sounds-consonants. These gestures accompany lip-reading, allowing for the hearing-impaired person to better visualize what their interlocutor is saying. According to the tests conducted by Uchanski, Delhorne, Dix, Et al. in “Automatic speech recognition to aid the hearing impaired: prospects for the automatic generation of cued speech”, this method allowed deaf people to go from 25% of understanding a complex message to 84%. It can be used in private settings with family and friends, but our project will mainly focus on school education and training. As it has been shown that the cost of hearing loss is highly due to social isolation and unemployment, such a technique can be an asset to tackle early school leaving and provide a better access to the labor market for people with hearing loss. Research by Hage, Alegría, Laybaert Et al. has also shown that Cued Speech can help in morphosyntax development, which leads to an improvement in reading, spelling and lexicon acquisition. These results bring great possibilities for other students such as those with learning disorders or a low level of literacy. The use of this method could thus not only foster better inclusion for deaf people but could also be of great benefit in developing the literacy skills of all students in the classroom.
The objectives we wanted to achieve with the implementation of the project are to reach and raise the awareness of as many people as possible through both information and training. In this way, people such as teachers will not only be able to find out about this system, what it is and its advantages, as well as its effectiveness, but they will also be able to learn a little more than the basics, free of charge and independently. We wanted to produce tools for teaching or reviewing Cued Speech in the three languages of the project, which could be used directly by trainers. The intention was also to increase access and use but also to modernise the training while incorporating the International Phonetic Alphabet. In addition, we wanted to point out other potential beneficiaries of this system through the project. Its use can be extended beyond the target group of the hearing impaired to benefit others who also need to perceive the language accurately and improve the quality of their education. The acquisition of an additional language is one example.
The WHO estimates that by 2050 there will be 900 million deaf people in the world. The « Fédération Francophone des Sourds de Belgique » calculates that about 13% of deaf and hard of hearing people use sign language to communicate. Other categories of deaf people are less supported. Cued Speech (CS) facilitates access to a spoken language that can be useful to everyone (oralists or signers). Its effectiveness has been scientifically proven, but it is not yet sufficiently known and taught. Hearing aids do not allow the perception of a spoken message in the noisy environment. Cued Speech makes it easier to acquire and use spoken languages. Deaf people's access to education and then to work and life as full citizens is thus opened without language barriers. Other opportunities such as learning a new language can be made possible by using this code to complement lip-reading. The project will address the need for information about this technique and the benefits of using it. The new tools allow for the modernisation of training techniques, self-training and the additional skill of cue reading training courses.