SIGN2Inclusion: Facilitating DHH Students' Democratic Participation & Inclusion through a Multimodal Sign Language Lexicon on Environment and Emerging Technologies Terms

SIGN2Inclusion seeks to facilitate DHH secondary students’ (15-18 y/o) democratic participation and inclusion by creating a Multimodal Sign Language (SL) Lexicon on Environment and Emerging Technologies concepts to retain STEM’s central focus in DHH education and facilitate knowledge development, mobility, and exchange in those areas. This way, SL neologisms are to be generated and diffused in wider DHH communities, ti enhance current and future students’ STEM career prospects. The project will develop an accessible, customized Multimodal SL Lexicon and a Virtual Museum with Environment & Technology exhibits to support DHH students’ science learning and help them establish interconnections between newly signed terminologies. This will result in a powerful, appealing learning experience for DHH secondary learners that can incite their pursuit of STEM careers & academic learning and excellence, whilst provide avenues for inclusive participation in related initiatives. The project will result in a Multimodal Lexicon and Virtual Museum, both customized with accessibility elements (SL videos, moving images, text) for DHH secondary classrooms. These are expected to promote STEM knowledge acquisition, increase science capital, reinforce STEM career-uptake and democratic participation, as well as prepare them to respond to 21st century challenges. SIGN2Inclusion is expected to result in a novel methodology for DHH’S social inclusion and accessibility.