Title: A virtual environment to help deaf students with written language

Authors: João Carlos Lopes Fernandes; Silvia Cristina Martini Rodrigues; Ovídio Lopes da Cruz Netto

Addresses: Instituto Mauá de Tecnologia, Praça Mauá, 1-São Caetano do Sul, SP, Brazil ' Universidade de Mogi das Cruzes, Av. Dr. Cândido Xavier de Almeida e Souza, 200 Mogi das Cruzes, SP, Brazil ' Universidade Nove de Julho, Av. Dr. Adolpho Pinto, 109 Barra Funda, SP, Brazil

Abstract: The environment developed in 'visual basic' and PostgreSQL, helps deaf students in the construction of sentences in the Portuguese language respecting their rules of writing. Its design is passed by the interaction between the multidisciplinary team of teachers and a researcher. We identified the characteristics and profiles of deaf students. Videos show how the phrases must be created (one for each sentence), based on images (photos) that illustrate the situation. The environment was divided into five stages with levels of increasing difficulty. The first phase shows a gap to be filled with the suggested words for choice, in the second phase are two gaps, in the third stage are three gaps and in the fourth phase are four gaps. The fifth phase calls for the development of a sentence without words for the choice, only a video gives instructions.

Keywords: inclusion; deafness; virtual environment; learning; verbs; Portuguese language; writing rules; deaf students; written language; sentence construction; videos; hearing impairment.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2013.056283

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2013 Vol.12 No.1, pp.26 - 37

Received: 19 Jul 2012
Accepted: 07 Apr 2013
Published online: 27 Sep 2014 *

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