Purpose: Almost 95 percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents who may not know sign language or who have low levels of proficiency in sign language. Although 75 percent of hearing parents eventually decide to use sign language with their deaf child, they typically struggle to learn a second language in a visual modality. The deaf children of hearing parents remain significantly delayed in language development throughout their lives when compared to hearing children or deaf children of deaf parents. This is due in part to a lack of language exposure at home. Because of these delays in language development, deaf children of hearing parents are at considerable risk for poor educational outcomes. What is needed is the development and evaluation of effective interventions to promote sign language learning and use among hearing parents of deaf children.

To address this need, researchers are developing and conducting an initial evaluation of SmartSignAlert and SmartSignExpress. These interventions are designed to help hearing parents of deaf children to learn sign language through the video delivery of signing on mobile phones. The SmartSignExpress portion of the program will enable parents' quick in situ access to signs that they might need to communicate with their children. SmartSignAlert will make available American Sign Language mini-lessons on their cellular phones as needed throughout the day. The intervention, which ultimately will be unified into one SmartSign Application, is intended to promote sign language learning among parents and improve students' use of sign language.

Project Activities: The research team will use an iterative process to develop and refine SmartSignAlert and SmartSignExpress over the 3-year project period. The first year of the project is devoted to rapid prototyping of SmartSignExpress and SmartSignAlert. During this process, sign vocabulary, phrases, and sentences will be selected and prototypes will be tested. Next, the prototypes will be used with 10 parents and data collected will be used to further develop the interventions. The final year of the project will include integrating SmartSignAlert and SmartSignExpress into a unified SmartSign application. The new application will then be examined through a pilot study comparing three groups of parents who receive either (1) SmartSign alone, (2) typical in-person sign language class instruction, or (3) in-person sign language class instruction plus SmartSign. The researchers will analyze the impact of the program on parents and students' use of sign language.

Products: The products of this project include a fully developed SmartSign application and reports on the potential impact of SmartSign for improving parents' learning of sign language and children's use of sign language.

Structured Abstract

Setting: Initial development activities will occur at Georgia Tech. Parents will be recruited from the adult sign classes at the Atlanta Area School for the Deaf.

Population: Hearing parents of young deaf children who are 6 years old or younger.

Intervention: SmartSignAlert will present parents with short sign lessons on their mobile phone, spaced throughout the day to best encourage learning. Besides signs, Tidbits of Information for Parents and Siblings (TIPS) will be delivered to parents. TIPS will be developed to cover American Sign Language (ASL) grammar and culture, parent-deaf child interaction, and might also include local deaf events to try to introduce parents to deaf adults and other parents of deaf children. TIPS represent the types of information parents have requested from professionals to assist them in learning sign language and about deafness. SmartSignExpress will allow parents to ask for the appropriate sign or phrase in spoken English (e.g., “time to go to bed") when communicating with their deaf child. A video of the appropriate sign appears on the parent's mobile phone, and the parent can then repeat the phrase to the child.

Research Design and Methods: The research team will employ an iterative design process to develop SmartSignAlert and SmartSignExpress. In this process, the prototypes of each system will be developed and then individually tested with Georgia Tech students and small groups of parents. Through the iterative design process, the participants will participate in ongoing pilot tests and provide feedback on the signs presented, as well as on the usability and feasibility of the system. In Year 1, the rapid prototyping of SmartSignExpress and SmartSignAlert will begin. This will involve a development and an evaluation cycle (sign vocabulary, phrases, and sentences will be selected and prototypes will be tested). During Year 2, the research team will deploy mobile systems in homes and evaluate these systems followed by incorporation of refinement upgrades to the design. In Year 3, the research team will finalize the sign vocabulary/phrases/lessons, and SmartSignExpress will be integrated technologically with SmartSignAlert into one comprehensive SmartSign program. The final pilot study will be a randomized trial with 60 parents to test the promise of SmartSign for improving parent and student use and retention of signs.

Control Condition: The control condition is the sign language instruction parents typically receive in classroom settings (i.e., "business as usual”).

Key Measures: Measures across conditions include class retention, improvements in sign language recall scores, and self-report measure of sign language usage. When the children are ages 2 or more, children's sign recall will be tested using standard picture inventories. The research team will also track usage data (e.g., number of sign alerts, usage time). Usability and feasibility measures will include parent interviews.

Data Analytic Strategy: A repeated measures analysis of variance will be used to evaluate improvements in test scores, number of parent-reported signs, and the number of signs produced by the children. Descriptive data from the interviews will be summarized to explore program usability and feasibility.

Products and Publications

Proceeding

Weaver, K.A., and Starner, T. (2011). We Need to Communicate: Helping Hearing Parents of Deaf Children Learn American Sign Language. In Proceedings of the 13th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility (pp. 91–98). Dundee, Scotland: ACM. doi:10.1145/2049536.2049554 Full text