Three educators are optimising a software product for students with hearing issues to access audio-visual content, to achieve a universal design for a concurrent, mainstream student pool that was not envisaged at the outset.
Educators Build Web-Based Literacy Assessment Software
AvenueDHH Platform
The product, AvenueDHH, gives educators a standardised way to measure student literacy while allowing for variables in the abilities being tested. Student progress is tracked with review and monitoring tools in the online assessment software, which has student and teacher-specific interfaces.
Woord Vor Woord (Word For Word) Software
Earlier this year, Karien Coppens, a researcher in the Netherlands, devised an online vocabulary test to accurately measure the ability of deaf students. Notably, her research found children who had digital hearing-devices and sustained parent support, did better in online vocabulary and literacy tests.
Hearing – and reading ability – appear to be linked, with numerous studies showing parent interactions, audibility (hearing) and home exposure to new vocabulary to be recurring factors in a child’s very early literacy skills.
Digital Literacy
With child digital literacy being all-important, software tools and platforms are evolving to acknowledge that some deaf children will prefer verbal communication, with others favouring more visual (signed) interactions.
One size does not fit all, when meeting the needs of students who’re deaf or hard-of-hearing, but as the creators of AvenueDHH know, universal design theories can be extrapolated to achieve a product for a mainstream market.
As Karien Coppens will testify, reusing software code is a positive first step.
More Reading
- New Study: Babies Learn Language By Lip-Reading
- Listening & Speaking: A Link To Reading/Writing?
- Hearing-Aids And Parents Boost Kids’ Vocabulary
- Does Lip-Reading Benefit Kids’ Reading Ability?
- New Words-App For Children With Hearing Devices
- Digital Media Content Is Double-Edged For Deaf Students
- Digital Media Content Accessibility For Deaf Students
- Captions In The Classroom Boost Literacy Skills
- Digital Readers (eReaders) Improve Child Literacy
- Parent Query: Apps To Record A Child’s Voice
- Learning European Languages With Live-Captions
- Knowmia, Panopto and MicroCone In The Classroom
- Student Fights Four Years For Classroom Captions
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