Türk İşaret Dili Kullanan Sağır Çocuklar için İkidilli Okuma Gelişimi Uygulamaları

Background

Despite the presence of materials supporting deaf children's language, education and cognitive development in western countries, in Turkey visual pre-school materials for pre-school deaf children are very limited. For this reason, deaf children's level of knowledge, reading skills and language and cognitive development cannot develop sufficiently. There is a great need for materials that help deaf children to develop Turkish and Turkish Sign Language, improve their creativity, influence their future academic and social life.

Project Goals

• Two bilingual children's stories in Turkish and Turkish Sign Language will be prepared. Stories will be translated to ASL and English.
• Signers will take training on children story narration.
• Illustration and graphic design of the story will be made and videos will be montaged.
• Example course plans will be prepared for teachers to use stories in the classroom.

Project Results

• A bilingual children storybook application in Turkish Sign Language and Turkish, compatible with Android and IOS was developed.
• An authentic story was written entitled “Keloğlan Marine Engineer” and this story was translated to Turkish Sign Language, Turkish, American Sign Language and English. The story was integrated both the applications of Association of People with Hearing Impairment of Turkey and Gallaudet University.
• The story named Baobab that have been created by Gallaudet University was also translate into Turkish Sign Language and Turkish.
• A question set was created for each of these stories to strengthen children’s learning process.
• Stories were downloaded for more than 4.000 times.
• In cooperation with Boğaziçi University, a scientific article was published in which the experiences of developing bilingual educational material were presented.
• The project won the first prize in the Accessible Digital Applications category of Turkey Accessibility Awards organized by Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Services.

Testimonials

“I now watch the story in sign language. I am also learning the alphabet. I really like it. I would love many more different stories like that.” 6 Years Old Child

“When I read a storybook, I rarely understood a word. I kept asking my mother. My family is deaf. They are not good at Turkish words. I was having a hard time. Discovering this application made me really happy. I have never done such practice before. I am so happy.” 14 Years Old Child