Sign My World: Lessons Learned from Prototyping Sessions with Young Deaf Children

Abstract

Sign My World is an application that aims to help pre-literate deaf and hearing-impaired children to learn Australian Sign Language (Auslan). Development is in its early stages and faces challenges in terms of interaction with the children that the application aims to help. This paper presents a set of experiences from early prototyping sessions conducted with a small group of deaf and hearing-impaired children. These experiences indicate the ability and emerging desire of the children to act as active participants within the development process, the visual nature of these children, and the existence of issues in relation to communication between the application developer and the children.