EDUSIGN & SIGNEDU: JOINT VENTURE OF CURRICULUM STUDIES AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN SIGN LANGUAGE

<< Background >>Despite international efforts and legal actions to address the inequities the Deaf face in their daily lives and education, the problems they encounter continue to exist and there is still a need to raise the awareness of society about the Deaf-related issues.Due to the lack of enough number of certified and qualified sign language interpreters, Deaf face communication problems in their lives.Thus, there is dire need to start or multiply the number of sign language interpreting undergraduate programs and certificate programs to increase the number of qualified sign language interpreters, which consequently create significant employment opportunities for the Deaf (R1).Moreover, due to the language barrier, the Deaf experience serious problems in their school lives and only a limited number of deaf individuals can have access to higher education, which deprives them one of the basic human rights, equal access to education, and decreases their employment opportunities.Subsequently, effective means are to be suggested to make the Deaf pursue their education, especially at the tertiary level (R2).Finally, to get an on-going large scale public attention to the Deaf issues, effective means of awareness raising need to be realized (R3).<< Objectives >>- To suggest a sign language coordination network to coordinate the data-driven approach for initiating and/or revising curriculum for sign language interpreting in order to increase both the number of sign language interpreting undergraduate programs and certificate programs, and qualified sign language interpreters.- To suggest an AI based solution to solve the inequity problem of Deaf community in education: An artificial intelligence (AI)-based infrastructure which can interpret in sign language.Via this infrastructure, more accessible written language in education was hypothesized in future in regular classes.- To suggest a deaf and sign language center to coordinate studies and efforts to raise awareness about the Deaf community, and function as an academic body to study sign language teaching, sign language interpreting, and technological innovation that could promote the Deaf to become independent and successful.<< Implementation >>To realize the objectives, needs, analysis, and context analysis, including international and national legal issues were considered. Besides, the body of knowledge and experience accumulated in the world and especially in the participating countries were shared to exploit to realize the objectives of the project. For this end, curriculum-related practices of Finland and Sweden were utilized to initiate sign language interpreting undergraduate curriculum. Similarly, sign language teaching curriculum and practice in Turkey, Finland, and Sweden were examined to start a sign language prep school program and recalibrate the existing educational programmes, particularly in Turkey. Besides, to coordinate all the curriculum studies, steps were taken to provide a model for an academic coordination network between the three countries. As for the AI-based infrastructure, the infrastructure developed so far in Turkey, was transferred to a Finnish context, exploiting its corpus and visual data basis on language. Similarly, the research center has been established to handle activities and studies concerning social and academic aspects of the Deaf-related issues under four categories:a) Academic studies, b)Awareness-raising activities, c)Introducing solutions to the problems faced by the deaf in daily life, d)Legislation proposal studies or studies for the evaluation of current legislation<< Results >>R1: European Sign Language Coordination Network have been formed which provided a common framework for sign language education and sign language interpreting programs based on the context and needs analysis surveys by reaching many sign language interpreters and Deaf in European countries in addition to the data collected in Turkey, Finland and Sweden.R2: An AI-based infrastructure has been improved, piloted and evaluated in Finland, which can later be exploited in other countries. R3: An online platform called Deaf and Sign Language Research Center has been founded to serve for the development of Deaf-related and sign language related activities and studies at the international level making them a joint academic and social venture.