Designing a Mobile Video Game to Help Young Deaf Children Learn Auslan

Abstract

Hearing–impaired children of hearing parents face challenges in learning sign languages, due in part to a lack of language immersion. These difficulties are compounded by the lack of learning resources available to these children. Technological resources, in particular, have the potential to aid Deaf children learning sign languages. The increasing ubiquity of mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets presents an opportunity for the development of such resources which could be made available to a wide audience, while also enabling developers to utilise mobile-specific features such as context awareness. The Seek and Sign project aims to create mobile-delivered technological resources to aid Deaf children learning Australian Sign Language (Auslan), such as the Sign My World application. This paper will discuss early work in the development of this application, with a focus on the potential uses of video game principles, context awareness and system personalisation in promoting learning, and consideration of how they may be implemented in Sign My World. We will present an interface prototype, as well as a briefly outlining a series of requirements elicitation sessions undertaken to discover a direction for future developments of the application.