Deaf Literacy: a Computational Process to Design Sign Language/portuguese Artifacts for Internet

The lack of educational tools for/in Sign Language (SL) is one of the most challenging issues faced by the Deaf communities in Brazil – it causes language barriers (e.g. prejudice, late acquisition, lack of standards etc.). This deficit is detrimental to the development of the Deaf culture (a social movement that regards deafness as a difference in Human experience). 90% of Deaf children are born to non-Deaf parents: a hindrance to SL acquisition (the natural language of the Deaf) necessary for intellectual development. The Internet and the WWW are paramount to provide the Deaf children and their parents with tools for Literacy (SL as the first language and the written modality of the second language). However, most researches and pedagogical literature do not provide educators and designers with means with which to work. This paper addresses the issue by presenting a pedagogical-computational process that allows for flexibility, scientific-based design of Intellectual Artifacts (linguistic interpretation and solution of a given problem).