[Digital_Divide] Deaf Children and ASL Database

[bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net]

Deaf Children Learn to Read With Sign Language Database

Tuesday December 21, 9:01 am ET

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Dec. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Deaf children 
and adults around the world are learning to read and communicate better 
thanks to SignBank -- a FileMaker Pro database application that stores 
the movements, hand shapes and facial expressions in a written form of 
sign language known as SignWriting.

By correlating signs to written words, SignBank helps improve literacy 
among deaf-born adults and children, who often have difficulty learning 
to read a spoken language based on sounds they have never heard. 
SignBank also helps the deaf understand other sign languages.

"Imagine how hard it is for deaf people to learn the printed words of a 
spoken language when they have never heard any of these sounds," said 
Valerie Sutton, creator and director of SignBank and inventor of 
SignWriting. "The database lets them search on words or signs. For 
many, this is the first time they have looked up a word in a 
dictionary, and the quick connection they make to written expression is 
inspirational."

A Key to Literacy Among the Deaf

Illiteracy rates are high among the deaf. Teaching these students to 
read is an ongoing challenge for educators. At a number of schools in 
the United States and Europe SignBank provides a vital link between 
sign language and written language.

"These children have to learn two languages -- American Sign Language, 
which is their native language, and English, which is their written 
language," said Dr. Cecilia Flood, SignWriting Literacy Project 
director for Albuquerque Public Schools Pilot Program, who has been 
using SignBank at the Hodgin school since 1999. "SignBank is the first 
exposure to a written form of the native language, and the children 
love it. The competency they instinctively feel to seeing and 
understanding a written form of Sign Language transfers directly to 
seeing and understanding the written form of English."

Multilingual Sign Language Dictionary

In addition to improving literacy, the SignBank also translates sign 
languages. Contrary to popular belief, sign languages are not 
international. There are hundreds of sign languages in the world that 
differ from culture to culture and country to country. American Sign 
Language, for instance, is different from British Sign Language, which 
is different from Irish Sign Language.

As the written form of sign language, SignWriting is being used by 
thousands of deaf and hearing-impaired people in 27 countries to 
improve deaf education.

SignWriting was originally invented in 1974 by Sutton, then a 
professional ballet dancer, as a way to write dance movements. The 
SignWriting alphabet is a way to write body movement much as the Roman 
alphabet writes words in English, French or German. By capturing the 
individual visual hand shapes, movement arrows and facial expressions 
that make up in the SignBank FileMaker Pro database, SignWriting is now 
searchable and interactive for students and researchers.

The SignBank database includes a dictionary of sign symbols that can be 
sorted and printed, or viewed as picture dictionaries for children, as 
well as multi-lingual databases for researchers, complete with video 
clips and animation.

Originally, compiled as two standalone dictionaries in the 1980s, 
Sutton and her team reprogrammed the dictionaries in FileMaker Pro in 
order for the collection of symbols, signs, lessons, and manuals to 
become completely searchable and interrelated. Also, with a FileMaker 
Pro web access, the collection of 25,000 symbols that comprise the 
SignBank is readily available to help researchers around the word 
develop new software based on SignWriting.

SignBank is available as a free download 
(http://www.signbank.org/signbank.html ) for individual users PC or 
Macintosh users worldwide. Other users, such as schools and 
researchers, pay a modest fee to use the software.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041221/sftu003_1.html

---

Jason Barkeloo
President
TouchSmart Publishing
6522 Waldorf Place
Cincinnati, OH  45230
http://www.touchsmart.net
t: 513.225.8765
f: 206.666.4856

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