Aims of the project: To date there has been limited academic literature on the lived experience, or opportunities to empower Deaf children or communities in low- and middle-income countries. We know the majority of the Deaf population in low resource settings do not have access to sign language. We envisage that empowering the Deaf community though a digital sign-language platform will rapidly accelerate development of Deaf culture, giving deaf individuals voice and opportunity, mirroring changes that instigated empowerment of Deaf communities in the USA and Europe 200 years ago.

Methodology: We will use our partnership with local Deaf schools to evaluate the lived experience of those children attending the school. We will recruit 10-15 key informants at each site (approximately 60-70 individuals in total) and undertake semi-structured interviews with stakeholders (where necessary using local sign language interpreters). First, we will explore the difficulties deaf children and young people face (historic and contemporary), including attitudes, perceived life opportunities, and stigma (including self-stigma). We will focus on what has or could lead to empowerment of such individuals, including exploring the attitudes and roles of parents / caregivers, teachers and community members, and access to sign language.

We will then explore the opportunity for assistive technology for sign language communication to aid empowerment of Deaf individuals and communities. DeafReach have developed an open-source web and app based digital dictionary of over 6000 words, which converts written and spoken language into Pakistan sign language to support deaf individuals and teachers. The app and website have been accessed by >1 million individuals since inception in 2014, and the app has 2000 active users, with 95% finding the resource independently or by word of mouth.

We will implement this program in Cambodia, Zambia, and/or Malawi, as a means to investigate challenges and opportunities to translate this software for use with other sign languages. We will evaluate user engagement with the platform, the challenges of its adoption and the potential to enable user empowerment. We will measure the experience of a range of stakeholders, including users, carers/family members and teachers using semi-structured interviews on a cohort of 10-15 participants at each site, supplemented by a questionnaire for the entire cohort, drawing upon existing sociotechnical approaches and existing frameworks to evaluate experience of the intervention (ease of use, challenges to use, resistance to use and developed technical skills/literacy) and outcomes on self-reported quality of life (access to and impact on user learning, ability for communication and socialisation, improved confidence and empowerment, impact on employment or employability, perceptions of social inclusion & reduction of stigmatisation).

Perceived student contribution: student will lead the academic evaluation of this project, and gain experience in qualitative data collection and analysis as well as knowledge and experience of challenges of implementation of processes and technologies in low resource settings.

Educational outcomes for the student: This PhD will;

-      Enhance the student’s capacity to conduct qualitative data collection and analysis as well as knowledge and experience of challenges of implementation of processes and technologies in low resource settings.

-      Gain a detailed understanding of the experiences and challenges faced by deaf children in our partner LMICs and the factors that support empowerment.