Tourist guide is the person who will introduce the country to domestic and foreign tourists in the best way, help them during their travels, provide accurate information, and have a professional authority certificate (TUREB 2006: 246).Especially in tourism, which is based on cultural heritage, sufficient knowledge and high quality tour guidance service should be provided (Dahles, 2002: 783). İZRO is one of the most important occupational chambers serving the tourist guides of our country.It organizes continuous face-to-face training activities for the personal and professional development of its members.The uncertainty in the working hours of the tourist guiding profession, intense and tiring working conditions, and the ignoring of the personal life, personal, professional and educational works of the guides during the organization of the tour programs are expressed as an important professional problem for tourist guides (Doswell, 1997: 3).Due to the working conditions of the members, it is generally not possible to participate in the training activities.The research carried out by İZRO in 2019 in the form of tourist guides throughout the country confirms this situation.72% of the tour guides participating in the survey study and focus group meetings stated that vocational and personal training activities should be on digital and online platforms (İZRO, Determination of Personal and Professional Development Activities, 2019). The tourism industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in the world.It has become an important advantage to develop new tourism types in an increasingly competitive environment and attract more tourists with new destinations.One of the most important types of tourism sector is the disabled tourism market.The European Hearing Impaired Federation (EFHOH) stated in its report titled “Hearing Loss: The Statistics” published in 2015, although it is difficult to know the exact number of hearing impaired in the world and in Europe, an estimated 9% of the population of the European Union with 507.4 million.He states that approximately 50 million people are deaf.This is a huge number and represents an important tourist potential. The tour guides who participated in the Determination of Personal and Vocational Training Activities; It is accessible for 60% of tour guides to know sign language, 60% of them encounter hearing-impaired individuals on their tours, 93% of them have communication problems with these people, 100% believe that they can communicate with these people even if they have the opportunity to learn sign language.He stated that he contributed to the idea that he would contribute to tourism completely or partially, and that 96% of the tour guides participated in the idea that tour guides would contribute to the tourism and increase the number of tourists. Our reason for preparing our project is our belief that we will produce a practical and quick solution to these needs.Our project will meet a very important need of the hearing impaired, support the participation in social and cultural life, and ensure that our country and project partner countries become competitive in the tourism market for the disabled.Our target groups are families of hearing-impaired individuals as well as hearing-impaired individuals, sign language users, hearing-guided tour guides and tourism industry. The idea of our project was through output works; • An Education Management System that tour guides and other interested parties can use free of charge, • Sign language curriculum for tourism and tour guides at A1 and A2 levels, • Training materials at A1 and A2 levels, • A Tourism Sign Language Dictionary will be created in the A1 and A2 programs and in the field of tourism with frequently used signs. The titles of our management activities are as follows: A1.Project Management, A2.Dissemination, A3.Monitoring and Evaluation, A4.Activities That Will Create a Multiplier Effect. Within the scope of our project, many multiplier activities and three Multiplier Events are planned. Multiplier events activities are as follows. E1-A1 Level, E2-A2 Level Promotion and Evaluation Conference E3-''Vocational Sign Language on Tourism '' Project Promotion Conference Our project has three transnational meetings and an educational activity. M1-Opening, M2-Evaluation, M3-Final Meeting. Our training activity will be held in Portugal and the two focal points of training are as follows: a.LMS Admin Panel Management, User Panel and Technical Training b.Management Training Our project priorities are the disabled - special needs, open and distance education, foreign language teaching and learning. In addition, our project contributes to the overall objectives of the Erasmus + Program, especially education, the goals of the Europe 2020 Strategy, the strategic framework goals for European cooperation in education and training (ET 2020), the goals of raising European values, and multilingualism.
• We prepared a platform for professional tourist guides and employees of tourism sector, who are unable to develop their professional skills or acquire new skills due to irregular working hours. Thanks to this platform they can learn sign languages of different countries regardless of time and place, • The mother tongue of the deaf community is sign language. We aimed that deaf tourists could receive tourism guidance and other tourism services in their mother tongue, • We wanted to prepare a learning program at A1, A2 and B1 levels focused on the tourism sector, • We wanted to prepare distance learning materials for this learning program, • We wanted to contribute to the diversification of disabled tourism services at national and international levels, • We aimed to contribute to the spread of digital and innovative learning applications to wider audiences, especially tour guides, • We aimed to support the use of technology and the development of digital competencies in vocational education, • We wanted to contribute to the vertical and horizontal integration of digital education materials into current education systems. • We wanted to develop good practices on how to include and apply sign language in vocational education.
Uncertainty in working hours of the tourist guidance profession, intensive and strenuous working conditions, ignoring the private lives, personal, professional and educational activities of the guides during the organization of the tour programs are expressed as an important professional problem for the tourist guides (Doswell, 1997). İZRO is one of the largest professional chambers of our country that serves tourist guides. It organizes continuous face-to-face training activities for the personal and professional development of its members. However, due to the above-mentioned working conditions, our members were unable to participate in educational activities or meet their needs. This problem led us to a detailed research on this subject. In 2019, the research conducted by İZRO in our country in the context of tourist guides confirms this situation. 72% of the tour guides participating in the survey and focus group meetings stated that vocational and personal training activities should be on digital and online platforms (İZRO, Determination of Personal and Professional Development Activities, 2019). Our reason for preparing our project was our belief that we would produce a practical and fast solution to these needs.