The Communication Centre for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Publications
The Signwiki project was created after the collaboration between the Communication Center and the Icelandic International Development Agency in Namibia ended in 2009.
The wish was to continue supporting the development of deaf services in developing countries. Signwiki has attracted attention around the world and the system has already been put into use in Namibia and Tanzania, with help and training from the staff of the Communication Center, but also in Norway, the Faroe Islands and Finland.
A development project in Iceland has thus created a basis for new solutions that can be used all over the world to give people access to the sign language of the country in question.
See: http://signwiki.is/ and http://signwiki.org/
SignOn was a project funded by the Socrates program of the European Union. Teaching material, to be used for self-learning English online, was developed and specially tailored to deaf individuals.
Seven European countries, i.e. England, Spain, Austria, the Netherlands, Norway, Finland and Iceland, worked together on the project. The goal was to enable deaf people to use written English in online communication.
SignOnOne was a two-year project funded by the Grundtvig program of the European Union. Teaching material, to be used for self-learning English online, was developed and specially tailored to deaf individuals.
Six European countries, i.e. Spain, Austria, the Czech Republic, Norway, Hungary and Iceland worked together on the project. The goal of the project was to make a course for beginners in English, where the teaching language is sign language.
Deaf users can use the course directly for self-learning, but also as supplementary material for studying at their school.
SignTeach was a three-year project funded by the Erasmus program of the European Union.
Its goal was to create a fund that stores information about e.g. pedagogy, organization in the classroom, relationship between language behavior, culture and information technology, tools such as the European Language Framework for Sign Language and a glossary of key teaching and learning terms, tour and learning opportunities, and ideas for sign language teachers and aspiring sign language teachers.
Participating countries were Iceland, Norway, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and the Czech Republic. All the participants had extensive experience in teaching sign language at all school levels. The European Union of the Deaf (EUD) participated in the meetings of the group and ensured access to associations of the deaf in the participating countries, as well as circulation and implementation in all European countries.
The Signs2Cross project was a two-year project funded by the Lifelong Learning program of the European Union. There were five participating countries, Germany, Norway, England, Italy and Iceland. The project aimed to make deaf people and their issues more visible.
The project was a continuation of the project Signs2Go, which was an online course in BSL (British Sign Language) where the teaching language was also sign language.
Through Signs2Cross, deaf people can gain international communication skills in sign language. This contributes to a stronger awareness of language, increased self-confidence and mobility of deaf people within Europe.
Hearing people, e.g. such as sign language interpreters interested in international communication, can also use Signs2Cross to train their international sign language communication.
Signer Studio is a Word Processor for Sign Language, which makes it possible to process sign language text in a similar way as a word processing program is used for working with written language.
The project was carried out in collaboration between Semience, which is owned by Trausti Þór Kristjánsson, author of Smiðs-Spilar, and the Communication Center. Signer Studio is based on software that Semience has developed in the field of image processing and video sharing on the web and the expertise and experience of the Communication Center. The program edits the content while recording and is basically a complete photo studio in an app. It has a recorder with a reader (promter) and an editing program, where text can be addet to the footage. This content can be shared in many ways. Sign language text can this way be easily edited, extra material recorded and inserted into the document, so the text can be moved and "reworded" in that way. The program's possible uses include e.g. reports, school projects, essays, magazines, tests, translations and blogs.
ProSign is a collaboration between European countries on the European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) for teaching sign language, in line with the same Framework for voiced languages.
The European Framework of Reference for Languages is a common European basis that can be used to build curriculum for language teaching. There guidelines for e.g. curriculum development, assessment, reading materials can be found. The language framework describes what language students need to learn in order to be able to use the language for communication and what knowledge and skills they need to have in order to be able to use the language effectively. The descriptors takes into consideration the cultural context in which the language is used. Appropriate skill levels, against which students can be assessed at each stage of the program, are precisely defined. On Icelands behalf the Communication Center is working on descriptors for Icelandic sign language to be worked into the European language framework.
See: http://www.ecml.at/ECML-Programme/Programme2012- 2015/ProSign/tabid/1752/Default.aspx