The main aim of the current study is to measure the effectiveness of a training program on enhancing the teaching process and critical thinking skills among teachers of the deaf and hearing-impaired ...in secondary schools through multimedia and according to academic qualification and years of experience variables. To accomplish the study objective, the researchers used the quasi-experimental approach. They designed a four-hour short training program that was applied to 60 teachers of the deaf and hearing-impaired in secondary schools. The study findings revealed that 53.4% of teachers of the deaf and hearing-impaired possess multimedia skills experience in teaching critical thinking skills in the pre-test, whereas 61.3% of teachers of the deaf and hearing-impaired possess multimedia skills experience in teaching critical thinking skills in the post-test. In addition, the results showed no statistically significant differences in the years of experience variable in teaching critical thinking skills. Furthermore, the results indicated that the teachers who have Master's degrees or higher had higher average scores in critical thinking skills compared to those with bachelor's degrees.
Knowing and learning hijaiyah letters is a very important basis in reading Qur'an from an early age. For some normal people knowing and learning hijaiyah letters is relatively easy but unlike the ...children who have special needs like deaf and hearing impaired children. They can only communicate using sign language both in the form of hand gesture, body gesture, and facial expression. From these problems, the author the author is motivated to make a system for implementing the hijaiyah letters cues for deaf and hearing impaired children using PCA (Principal Component Analysis) method which was installed on desktop computer. The process of hand gesture recognition consists of several steps: camera initialization, preprocessing, feature extraction using PCA to find eigen value and eigen vector, and hand classification using euclidean distance. The output of hand gesture recognition is hijaiyah letters identification from alif to ya' in the form of text and sounds.
In this paper, we introduce the DEEP-HEAR framework, a multimodal dynamic subtitle positioning system designed to increase the accessibility of deaf and hearing impaired people (HIP) to multimedia ...documents. The proposed system exploits both computer vision algorithms and deep convolutional neural networks specifically designed and tuned in order to detect and recognize the identity of the active speaker. The main contributions of the paper concern: a novel method dedicated to recognizing various characters existent in the video stream. A video temporal segmentation algorithm that divides the video sequence into semantic units, based on face tracks and visual consistency. Finally, the core of our approach concerns a novel active speaker recognition method relying on the multimodal information fusion from the text, audio, and video streams. The experimental results carried out on a large scale dataset of more than 30 videos, validate the proposed methodology with average accuracy and recognition rates superior to 90%. Moreover, the method shows robustness to important object/camera motion and face pose variation, yielding gains of more than 8% in precision and recall rates when compared with state-of-the-art techniques. The subjective evaluation of the proposed dynamic subtitle positioning system demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach.
The article is devoted to the analysis of written language of adolescents and young people with hearing impairment in the virtual space. The study involved 28 people, aged 16 to 20 years, 14 of them ...were with hearing impairments. 3 people at the age of 16 years old, 9 people are 17 years old, 4 people are 18 years old. The first part of the study was conducted as online questionnaires, which was aimed to clarify preferred virtual spaces for communication, the attitude to the written communication, also creative tasks for evaluation of written language developed by O.V. Vilenskaya was included. The second part consisted of analysis of the contents of the social network profile of the participants. The results have shown that the written language of deaf adolescents and young people in social networks reflected the general features of their verbal communication and social relations (in general, they use less detailed written statements than hearing peers do, less actually initiated written language, less flexible writing, less partners for communication in social networks, the prevalence of consistency errors). Nevertheless, it is significant that they appreciate the importance of writing and try to monitor its accuracy. Virtual communication in the life of young people with hearing impairments plays the same role as in the life of hearing peers and they successfully master this side of modern reality.
Статья посвящена анализу письменной речи подростков и молодых людей с нарушениями слуха в виртуальном пространстве. В исследовании участвовали 28 человек в возрасте от 16 до 20 лет (три человека в возрасте 16 лет, 9 человек – 17 лет, 4 человека – 18 лет); 14 человек имели нарушенный слух. Первая часть исследования проходила в виде онлайн-анкетирования, в котором выяснялись предпочитаемые виртуальные пространства для общения, отношение к письменному общению в них, а также давались творческие задания для оценки письменной речи, разработанные О.В. Виленской. Вторая часть состояла из анализа содержимого социальных страниц участников исследования. Результаты показали, что письменное общение глухих подростков и юношей в социальных сетях отражает общие особенности их речевого общения и социальных отношений (в целом более сжатые письменные высказывания, чем у слышащих сверстников, меньше собственно инициированной письменной речи, не столь гибкий стиль письма, меньше собеседников для общения в социальных сетях, преобладание ошибок согласования). Однако важным представляется тот факт, что они высоко оценивают важность письменной речи и стараются следить за ее правильностью. Виртуальное общение в жизни молодых людей с нарушенным слухом играет ту же роль, что и
в жизни слышащих, и они успешно осваивают эту сторону современной реальности.
Surtitling is a complementary communication system that renders the verbal utterances taking place on stage into a written format and makes this accessible to members of the audience. Beyond the ...decisions of the professionals involved in the surtitling process, many of the characteristics related to surtitling content and its format are determined by a number of paralinguistic aspects. In this context, the effectiveness of both the surtitling process and the end result will depend on the following: the facilities for accessible services within the building where live performances take place; the development of technological innovations included in live performances; and the specifications of the surtitling technologies used.
Central to the study detailed by this paper are the technical aspects related to the existing surtitling systems used in different live performances in scenic art venues. After a short introduction, dealing with the main features of stage performances, such as music, drama, stage, translation and surtitling practice, Section 2 examines the different indoor and outdoor spaces where live performances take place. In Section 3, new live performance spaces are presented. In Section 4, the surtitling practices of stage performances are outlined. In Section 5, commercially available software programmes are analysed, following the specifications for each genre. Section 6 concludes with a reflection on the multiple accessibility solutions that the latest developments in technology could offer to live performances.
Abstract
The paper sets out to describe the development of services for the deaf and hearing impaired provided by the Austrian Broadcasting Organization (ORF). In 1985, captions were introduced for ...the prime-time evening news bulletin and for the major news magazines. At present, ORF provides captions for approximately 2,160 program hours annually, giving it a leading position among German-language broadcasting organizations and making 12.5% of the total ORF television output accessible to deaf and hearing-impaired persons. The use of sign language on Austrian television, however, is still fairly limited.
A basic knowledge of English is indispensable nowadays. While there are many courses for hearing people, there are few aimed at deaf people who use a national sign language as their first or ...preferred language. This paper describes “SignOnOne”, a two-year Grundtvig project which is a follow-up to “SignOn!” (Internet English for the Deaf). “SignOnOne” teaches English for beginners with sign language as language of instruction. This allows the deaf users to access the course directly (the written language of their country is often a first foreign language). The target group are deaf adults, who can use the course in class but also explore English on their own. This online course will be accessible free-of-charge via the Internet homepage of the project without any log-in or download.
In this paper, we introduce a novel dynamic subtitle positioning system designed to increase the accessibility of the deaf and hearing impaired people to video documents. Our framework places the ...subtitle in the near vicinity of the active speaker in order to allow the viewer to follow the visual content while regarding the textual information. The proposed system is based on a multimodal fusion of text, audio and visual information in order to detect and recognize the identity of the active speaker. The experimental evaluation, performed on a large dataset of more than 30 videos, validates the methodology with average accuracy and recognition rates superior to 92%. The subjective evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach outperforming both conventional (static) subtitling and other state of the art techniques in terms of enhancement of the overall viewing experience and eyestrain reduction.
The general trend for the inclusion of deaf and hearing impaired students in Australia involves placing students in a mainstream classroom setting alongside their hearing peers with regular support ...from a Visiting Teacher of the Deaf. The provision of educational services to deaf and hearing impaired students in regional and rural areas, however, can be a challenge, with many parents frequently reporting reduced access to appropriate services. This study surveys parents of deaf and hearing impaired students located in regional and rural Western Australia to gain an insight into the level of satisfaction with current services and provides an opportunity for parents to comment on how, if at all, the service delivery model for deaf and hearing impaired students in these areas could be improved. In total, responses from 34 parents of deaf and hearing impaired students located in five regional and rural areas of Western Australia were analysed. Results showed that there was generally a high level of satisfaction with Visiting Teacher of the Deaf services; however, parents did report that contact regarding their child's needs, progress and accessibility to services could be improved through more regular and longer visits by Visiting Teachers of the Deaf. The benefits of applying a family centred paradigm to ensure flexible service delivery for deaf and hearing impaired students and the development of formal policies and guidelines for Visiting Teachers of the Deaf are discussed. Author abstract
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