On July 13, 2023, an EASIER project partner, Mark Wheatley (European Union of the Deaf) together with Maartje De Meulder (University of Applied Sciences Utrecht/Heriot-Watt University) delivered an insightful presentation at the XIX World Congress of the World Federation of the Deaf covering the subject of Deaf community involvement in projects developing sign language machine translation tools.
In their joint presentation, titled “Sign Language Machine Translation and Deaf Communities: the case for co-creation,” Mark and Maartje introduced the concept of sign language machine translation and the basic principles of co-creation. They also reflected on the involvement of the European Union of the Deaf (EUD) in EASIER and its sister project SignON. They described the role of the EUD in the projects, explained how deaf community perspectives are included at different stages of product development, and shared the insights that have emerged since the inception of EASIER and SignON in January 2021. They also discussed the positive impact that EUD’s involvement has had within and outside the two projects and talked about how these examples will be used to generate ‘best practices’ – a set of recommendations to be used by future projects.
Their presentation can be viewed here.
The role of EUD in EASIER
EUD’s main role is to ensure deaf community involvement using co-creation strategies. These include but are not limited to identifying ‘use-cases’ or circumstances, in which a machine translation application would/would not be used; identifying the needs, expectations, and experiences of deaf people when it comes to translation technology; and gathering feedback from deaf individuals regarding the application under development. Finally, at the end of the project, EUD will coordinate large-scale end-user evaluations to assess the acceptability and usability of the end product by the respective European deaf communities.
The World Congress of the World Federation of the Deaf
The World Congress is an official event of World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) organized by an Ordinary Member. World Congresses are designed to bring together delegates from member national associations, youth organizations and other participants who seek to partake in the global exchange of information and furtherance of the WFD vision, mission, and goals. It is organized a day after the WFD General Assembly and it is organised every four years. By organizing the Congress, WFD is promoting the human rights of deaf people and the status of member countries related to education, culture, arts, and sign languages. The 19th Congress was organized in Jeju, South Korea on July 11-15, 2023, in collaboration with the Korean Association of the Deaf (KAD). This year the theme was “Securing Human Rights in Times of Crisis.” The event gathered 2,000 participants from 130 countries.