The project " Plants And Nature Conveying Augmented Knowledge for Everyone" (PANCAKE) has as main objectives to improve the inclusion of the Deaf community in accessing nature, augment knowledge about the flora, design inclusive public spaces, through 5 innovative actions. In O1 PANCAKE will contribute to innovate five national sign languages, creating (for the first time) the "sign" for plants, flowers and trees more common in the four countries of the consortium. This will produce an inclusive taxonomy of completely new signs that will help interpreters, teachers and botanist in including the Deaf in their ordinary activities, but also will benefit the Deaf to access nature and share knowledge. ENS (IT), SordaPicena (IT), and AVSiE (ES)coordinated by FoEM that has close ties with the Deaf People Association of Malta will be the crucial partners for this output The O2 will complete the taxonomy with videos to learn the new “signs” (which could differ from sign language to sign language) with subtitle in English and in each National language, so the Deaf and the Interpreters can easily learn the new "words" and teachers, Info Centres and content writers can use them. AVSiE, with a dedicated shooting stage and experience in this field, will lead this output together with FoEM, which will produce the English and Maltese version of them collaborating with DPAM In O3, PANCAKE will address inclusion and accessibility in architectural design for info centres, public buildings and places. A manual collecting best architectural practices will help architects and professionals of the building sector to achieve a wider audience and build inclusivity directly from the design of spaces. The guidelines will be applied in two real plans for conversion/construction created by SordaPicena which has got a specialised Deaf Architect and SensoryTrust which is a leader in the UK on accessibility design. The advantage of having two specialised partners from different countries will give to the handbook a more exhaustive perspective. The O4 will complete the innovative tools produced by PANCAKE with educational videos, ready to be used to augment the accessibility to nature for Deaf people. A selection of the more iconic plants identified in the taxonomy of O1, will be chosen and will be described in short sign language documentaries. FoEM and SEO botanists will prepare the script for the short footages, integrated by subtitles in different languages and produced for each one of the five sign languages of the participating countries, ready to be used and broadcasted in Nature Reserves, Botanic garden, conferences, info centres all around Europe. ENS, will be crucial in leading the production of professional videos as it has extensive experience in the field. The O5 will address, involving a major player in interactive content sharing (Octavo), the adaptation of printed material into online, interactive content. The best practices handbook produced will be applied to real examples and all publications and material produced by PANCAKE will be uploaded and available online, for a life span longer than the project length. The new learning and disseminating material of PANCAKE will be translated in multimedia content, optimised across different devices (laptop, tablet, mobiles) and downloadable offline. In order to achieve the innovative outputs of the project, it is very important to have a partnership with experience in technical matters, in botany, natural environment as well as the associations of Deaf. It is also necessary to work at an international level, to exchange experiences and good practices about the different needs of Deaf people in accessing the natural environment. This combination of factors, all of them present in PANCAKE, will notably improve the results of the project. Transnational work is very important not only to exchange visions, methodologies and experiences but also to strengthen the promotion of the project and the use of outputs in other European countries. In PANCAKE, there are representatives of the Deaf national and regional associations (members of the World Deaf Association), members of Friends of the Earth and BirdLife (two of the big10 E-organisations in the World), these will benefit the dissemination of the project and especially its results in other European countries beyond the strategic partnership created for it. In Europe, there are, estimated, 70 million citizens with some form of hearing impairment, but specific materials for the identification of plant species is lacking or not existing in sign language. Language is the most important instrument for communicating and transmitting ideas and feelings and Sign Languages in the resolution of the European Parliament (06/17/1988) have been recognized as languages used by Deaf people and, therefore, their right to use it. This resolution encourages European countries to promote the use of Sign Languages.
The main objective has been to improve the accessibility to nature, especially to the Deaf communities of the four countries involved in the project. We wanted to achieve an improved inclusion of the Deaf community in accessing nature, augment knowledge about the flora, design inclusive public spaces, through 5 actions: selecting common flora with the help of our local botanists, creating the signs for the selected flora, recording videos of the new signs, as well as educational videos to use for educational purposes, and developing two manuals that would guide professionals in the environmental field to make spaces more inclusive for the Deaf, both physical and online spaces. The project is not only benefiting the professionals in improving their training to be able to attend to a greater number of people, but it also aimed at directly favour the hearing impaired both because of the intellectual products generated and because of the improvement in the attention they are going to be able to receive from both nature guides and visitor care centres in natural spaces.
The project " Plants And Nature Conveying Augmented Knowledge for Everyone" had as main objective to improve the training of professionals in nature tourism and botany which will facilitate access to nature and environment for the Deaf people in Europe. To achieve these objectives the project proposed an innovative way to contribute to the development of national sign languages since it has created (for the first time) the name of common plants and flowers species in Europe in each and any single national sign language of the partners' country (ES, MT, IT, EN) Many signs for many species of plants still do not exist in any sign language, but thanks to this project the consortium has been able to bring nature closed to the Deaf by creating new signs of a group of common plants. This advance is very important for the recognition of sign languages but also to make visible the need to advance in the support of deaf people throughout Europe.