Desarrollo y validación de una aplicación web y cd educativa inclusiva para el aprendizaje de la lengua de señas panameña

Abstract

The thesis’ investigation field is centered on hearing disabilities in an inclusive form. This is, it parts from the fact that one of the principal problems of the Panamanian deaf population is the lack of knowledge of a common code, which can be sings language, that can allow to communicate between them and also with hearing people. Just a tiny 0.18% of the population know the Panamanian Sings Language. Which constitutes a social communication problem, that means, that the “victims” are deaf people, because they are deprived of the general communicative act. In front of this panorama, an alternative based in innovation and accessibility that answers to the objective of developing and validating a web application and educational inclusive cd for the learning of the corresponding vocabulary to the Panamanian Sing Language is presented. Its convenient to highlight its inclusiveness, that guarantees the accessibility and usability for every citizen, with independence of their (dis)capacity, to not private anyone of the natural social participation that is communication. Accessible and usable for people without accessibility problems or for users with: • Deafness, they can visualize the querema of the Panamanian Sing Language and read the written description. • Hearing loss, in addition to the above they can regulate the intensity of the audio description. • Blindness, they can listen to the description of the movement and use screen translators. • Low vision, they can also regulate the visibility speed of the video and repeat it. • Deafblindness, they can access the text using a braille exit connected to the PC. • Attention problems, they can repeat the querema at different speeds and/or read with care the written description of the querema and visualize it´s drawing. • Intellectual problems, they can visualize the querema along with the meaning or word but also with the drawing that represents the meaning of the querema itself. • Social inequalities, they can access through a PC, but also through tablets and smarthphones. • Economic Limitations, they can access the videos and audio descriptions through the CD without the need to have an internet connection. The project develops under the model of investigation based on design (IBD), which validates the construction of the design in the context where it pretends to result useful. Meanwhile the informatic software has been elaborated following the Pressman engineering development methodology. The result has been three different inferfaces: of welcoming, of registry and of interactive content, that presents: words and grammatical categories, videos with the queremas, meaning that represents the word-querema, audio description of its movements, written description, text and grammar, answering to 1253 words in Panamanian Sing Language. From there the validation process was made through Focus Groups with groups of potential users, giving as a result of the suggestions and improvements expressed in the EnSeina (version 6) application as a contribution and resource to the didactic of the Panamanian Sing Language, including the self-learning of its vocabulary.