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Responsible Digital Transformations RDT

Personalized sign language learning at scale: 'Een Gebarenstrand aan de Taalzee'

In 2021, Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) was recognized by law as one of the country’s official languages.  To raise societal participation of deaf citizens, the law prescribes that the use of NGT in Dutch society must be increased. The present project aims to contribute to this end. It involves a collaboration between UvA and Prowise, a company that provides a digital language learning tool called Taalzee (“Language Sea”), which is used by more than 2.000 primary schools in the Netherlands.

We will create a learning environment for NGT, Gebarenstrand (“Sign Beach”), which will be integrated in Taalzee and will thereby become available to more than 300.000 children in the Netherlands. This will not only contribute to increased familiarity with NGT in Dutch society, but it will also provide a unique window into how children learn a visual language like NGT.

So far, language acquisition research has focused primarily on spoken languages. Our digital learning environment will yield extensive acquisition data for NGT. This will allow us to address fundamental questions in sign language linguistics and digital learning, which in turn will enable refinements of both online and offline sign language learning curricula. Thus, the project will have substantial scientific and societal impact.

Project team:

  • Abe Hofman (FMG)
  • Beyza Sümer (FGW)
  • Floris Roelofsen (FNWI)