Abstract
PurposePeople with severe or profound hearing loss face daily communication problems mainly due to the language barrier between themselves and the hearing community. Their hearing deficiency, as well as their use of sign language, often makes it difficult for them to use and understand spoken language. Cyprus is amongst the top 5 European countries with a relatively high proportion of registered deaf people (0.12 per cent of the population: GUL, 2010). However, lack of technological and financial support to the Deaf Community of Cyprus leaves the Cypriot deaf people unsupported and marginalised. The paper aims to discuss this issue.Design/methodology/approachThis study implemented user-centred design methods to explore the communication needs and requirements of Cypriot deaf people and develop a functional prototype of a mobile app to help them to communicate more effectively with hearing people. A total of 76 deaf adults were involved in various stages of the research. This paper presents the participatory design activities (N=8) and results of usability testing (N=8).FindingsThe study found that users were completely satisfied with the mobile app and, in particular, they liked the use of Cypriot Sign Language (CSL) videos of a real person interpreting hearing people’s speech in real time and the custom onscreen keyboard to allow faster selection of text input.Originality/valueDespite advances in communication aid technologies, there is currently no technology available that supports CSL or real-time speech to sign language conversion for the deaf people of Cyprus.
Highlights
Trying to perceive the speech of a hearing person is often hard and exhausting for people with severe and profound hearing loss (Munoz-Baell and Ruiz, 2000; Kuenburg, et al, 2016)
Even if the hearing person articulates well, it is still difficult for a deaf person to maintain effective communication; they often have to depend on other nondeaf family members or friends who take the role of interpreter whenever they have to communicate with hearing people (Kyle and Cain, 2015; Hadjikakou et al, 2009)
One non-functional requirement derived from the first participatory design session was to change the main colour of the app to blue
Summary
Trying to perceive the speech of a hearing person is often hard and exhausting for people with severe and profound hearing loss (Munoz-Baell and Ruiz, 2000; Kuenburg, et al, 2016). In the general community, hearing people are unlikely to know SL, and deaf people cannot always understand the spoken language. This inability to communicate effectively is an obstacle for deaf people in their social life, but it affects their employment, education and healthcare (Compton, 1993; Luft, 2000; Nunes and Pretzlik, 2001; Ubido, et al, 2002, Sirch, et al, 2016). According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), almost 5.3% of the world’s population have a hearing loss greater than 40 decibels and, within Cyprus, there are more than 1000 people with severe and profound deafness (CDF, 2017). Due to only recent recognition of Cypriot Sign Language as the official sign language of the Deaf of Cyprus, it is not supported by any of the current communication aid technologies
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