Skyline  
Research  
line decor
  HOME  : 13-Mar-2017 :  
line decor
 
 

Honours Project Proposed 2017: Supporting Deaf Users

This page provides more detail on some possible honours projects for student groups.

We require a number of projects ranging from rather technical backend systems to co-designed user-interfaces for the ongoing work we are doing with our partners the Deaf Community of Cape Town (DCCT) (www.dcct.org.za).

Brief Background

We write Deaf with a capital ‘D’ to distinguish deaf or hard of hearing in that Deaf people use a signed language to communicate, thereby defining their culture much like other groups who use textual languages like English. In South Africa we use South African Sign Language (SASL). Many Deaf people have limited literacy in spoken and written languages.

Bridging communication between Deaf and hearing people is an ongoing research area for us in an overall project that we have called SignSupport. When you take up one of these projects you will be joining a group of researchers and students form UCT and UWC computer science departments. In these projects you will be assisted by Ms Meryl Glaser who is our co-researcher.

We have already developed a system to train Deaf learners in computer literacy using mobile devices. This approach has a number of advantages but we now wish to integrate the training system with the PCs that the Deaf learners use for their training, thus the Signs project. In addition there are two projects to assist DCCT as an organization: Crafts and VideoUp.

   

1. Craftware Sales
DCCT produces a number of craft objects for sale (www.dcct.org.za/?q=craftware-catalog). The purpose of this project is to assist DCCT in marketing the products.

2. Computer Literacy Lessons for Deaf Adults
We have already developed a system to train Deaf learners in computer literacy using mobile devices. We would now like to create an extended version of the system for the computers on which the Deaf learners practice

 

VideoUp

 

Tutorial on Community-Based Co-Design

3. Video Editing and Upload Tool

DCCT captures many of their events on video using a high quality video camera. There is a requirement to archive the videos with suitable metadata and also to extract and edit clips and possibly add subtitles (for those of us who are not fluent in SASL), as well as transcoding them to compressed web friendly formats.

Homestead Creator System Design