In today's society, children who are D/deaf face an extreme disadvantage in education, training and employment. Despite many advances in recent years, adequate bilingual education in Sign language and written language is still not available in most European countries, leading to D/deaf children acquiring only lower literacy levels. Lack of opportunities, particularly in employment, can lead to psychological, social, emotional and economical problems, social exclusion and depression. According to the World Health Organisation, these are the most common and difficult issues for D/deaf people to overcome. Career Paths Inclusive contributes towards empowering D/deaf youth. As a result of project outputs, D/deaf youth are empowered and informed in their choice of future career, have access to and use bilingual digital tools, and have augmented their transferable skill set. The project aims to design, develop and test digital multimedia career guidance tools with bilingual (multilingual) content to empower D/deaf youth in planning their career paths, thereby facilitating greater self-determination and inclusion. There will be three work packages: IO1 CHECK YOUR PROFILE - an online generator providing suggestions for fields of work based on a series of questions in Sign Language and plain text on the user’s interests, strengths and weaknesses.IO2 CAREER PATH TOOLKIT - Multimedia toolkit enabling users to gain insight into a specific occupation via additional barrier free information in Sign Language and plain text. IO3 LEARNING BY PLAYING - digital games and activities provide job-specific vocabulary training in a contrastive learning format.The main target group is D/deaf youth aged 16 - 30. Participation and empowerment didactics are the cornerstones of project methodology. Selected D/deaf youth play a key role in output production, ensuring implementation is user-driven. The tools provide a contrastive learning effect, in Sign Language and written language, as well as incorporating visual elements, such as videos, animations, graphics, games and more. Plain text format is used to ensure maximum accessibility. Not only are D/deaf youth able to gain knowledge and insight into various careers, the tools foster the learning of specialised job-oriented vocabulary. Contrastive learning enables D/deaf youth to improve literacy levels in written language, as well as training and augmenting Signing competencies and fluency. The tools can be used for self-study purposes or as part of a blended learning approach to vocational training.Responsive design is fundamental to tool development, ensuring access via smart phone or tablet. Providing accessible and inclusive digital career guidance tools contributes towards ensuring greater equality of opportunity for D/deaf youth in their choice of career path. The tools will be available in the following Sign Languages: Austrian, Czech, Slovak and German, as well as German, Czech and Slovak written languages. The use of plain text and focus on visual presentation means that the tools can be used by other groups such as people with intellectual disabilities or hearing youth wishing to acquire Sign Language skills and competencies. The tools can be used in integrative and vocational schools, as well as by organisations offering employment services, counselling and support throughout Central Europe. Multiplier events in all 4 participating countries, combined with an effective dissemination strategy ensures the widest possible reach of the project outputs and the use of the tools.

<< Background >>The aim of Career Paths Inclusive 2.0 (CPI 2) is to design, develop and test digital multimedia career guidance tools in sign languages. Deaf youth can plan their career paths unaided or in a supported setting (training) in their first language (sign) and are empowered and informed in their choice of future career. CPI 2 is a follow-on project to augment the existing tools and develop new complementary ones. Through CPI 2, we want to address the priorities, particularly relevant for deaf youth: Strengthening employability, inclusion and addressing digital transformation: Deaf youth - is particularly vulnerable to marginalisation, exclusion and unemployment. They experience linguistic barriers to participation in education and training systems throughout their lives (WHO 2021, p.46). The problem starts at birth - 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents, so they lack an adult language model at home (Mitchell & Karchmer, 2004). Structural and linguistic limitations in education systems mean little or no bilingual instruction is available in schools throughout Europe. Most deaf children learn reading and writing without reference to sign language. Deaf youth often finish compulsory schooling with low literacy levels and few qualifications. Deaf students often demonstrate a lack of career planning (WHO 2021, p.46f), a lack of information about the job application process and a lack of employed deaf role models (Accessible Work 4 All 2020, Napier et. al. 2020, Hoogeveen 2015).Access to career guidance in sign language helps bridge linguistic barriers, provide access to information, enable self- study, self-determination and increased literacy levels, and enable fair and equal participation on the first labour market. CPI 2 augments the CPI toolkit, adding animated video tutorials, more careers videos, a training course for the job application process and an evaluation and guidelines of the quality of sign language in the outputs. The results are designed to provide deaf youth access to careers guidance in their first language. Self-determination is vital - bilingual content enables deaf job seekers to access digital content without the need for interpretation or communication assistance. Through the training course they gain practical experience guided by a trainer. With digital resources in sign language at their fingertips which they can refer to in their own time, replay and repeat, deaf youth can use the project outputs for self-study or in a training setting, thereby improving the transferable skills that they need to find a job. As a result, they are more attractive candidates in the first labour market. This is empowerment. Equipped with transferable skills developed through CPI 2, it is easier for deaf job seekers to work in companies interested in diversifying their workforce. Deaf youth have embraced some aspects of digitalisation, and many deaf users show more advanced digital skills and competencies than their hearing peers. Nevertheless, digitalisation relies heavily on written language, and even though the tendency is falling, 45 % of internet content is in English. Complex formulations and foreign languages constitute barriers to people with lower literacy levels, such as is (sadly) often found in deaf communities (Krausenecker 2006). This means that digital transformation needs to be carefully implemented using an inclusive approach. In the context of deaf youth, this means developing bilingual digital materials – in sign and written language – to ensure that content is accessible and easily understood by people who identify as native signers. Accessible digital transformation needs to include the accessibility of content, not just the infrastructure – digital content must include sign languages, but also supporting graphics, visual images or animation, as well as the use of plain language (easy-reading format). All of these enable full and broad access to all users across the literacy spectrum<< Objectives >>CPI 2 is a follow on project from the highly successful Career Paths Inclusive (2019 – 2021) project to design, develop and test digital multimedia career guidance tools in sign language (success indicators: unique website visitors: 46.765, users of interest profile: 800, Facebook Fans: 304, Instagram Followers: 332, YouTube views: 25,4 K/watch time 680h - 10.2021). The overall objective is to contribute to deaf youth empowerment and the realisation of articles 21 and 24 of the UN CRPD. The specific goal remains to inform and empower deaf youth, enabling them to plan their own career paths unaided or within a training setting through the provision of accessible career guidance information in their first language (sign language). We developed the Career Paths toolkit during the first project phase, which consists of an interest profile in Sign Language and numerous career orientation videos in 4 Sign Languages. The toolkit starts with CHECK YOUR PROFILE – a survey that invites users to answer 44 questions based on their interests, strengths and weaknesses. At the end of the survey, the three most appropriate areas of work appear as results. Accompanying the results are career orientation videos featuring 51 possible careers. We used plain language to facilitate a greater understanding of written accompanying texts, and there is a vocabulary section for difficult terminology. It combines picture or photo with the written word and Sign. CPI 2 augments the existing toolkit, adding additional resources and languages. We plan to develop four work packages: Output 1 consists of step-by-step explanation videos, which comprise animation and SL moderation on selected subjects such as job searches, interviews and CV/applications, and more. Output 2 consists of 40 videos in sign language about additional professions , output 3 is a training course about deepening the topics of the IO1 tutorial videos. For output 4, the partnership will develop an evaluation and guidelines on how to assess the quality of sign language in the project outputs. The tools are available in the following sign languages: Austrian, Dutch, Slovak and Italian, as well as German, Dutch, Slovak and Italian written languages. The use of plain language and focus on visual presentation means that the tools can be used by other groups such as people with intellectual disabilities or hearing youth wishing to acquire Sign Language skills and competencies. The tools can be used in integrative and vocational schools and organisations offering employment services, counselling, career guidance and support throughout Europe. There is a clear need for projects that provide bilingual tools for Deaf youth. Deaf or hard of hearing children and youth face many barriers in education, training and employment. Despite many advances in recent years, adequate bilingual education in sign language and written language is still not available in most European countries. That means in practice that many deaf children acquire only lower literacy levels, and there are currently few bilingual resources available to them. The first Career Paths Inclusive project had an exceptional resonance with the target group, which is why we would like to continue our work. The availability of career guidance tools in sign language enables deaf youth to decide for themselves, to plan and experiment in their first language, thereby facilitating greater self-confidence, self-determination, and inclusion.<< Implementation >>Activities are divided into 3 main areas. These are activities relating to project management, i.e. monitoring, reporting and quality management, those relating to the development of the 4 outputs, and finally, those relating to the dissemination, exploitation and long-term sustainability of the project outputs. Project management activities include communication and coordination, admin and financial management, maintenance of the logical framework analysis, work plan and Gantt chart, financial and narrative reporting, dissemination reporting, quality management and risk management activities.Through well-run and timely project management activities, we coordinate and harmonize activities between project partners while ensuring that the achievement of milestones and quality management are all assured, and all tasks are fulfilled in a timely way. Activities relating to the development of the outputs are as follows: Output 1 consists of 9 animated video tutorials providing careers guidance information on topics relevant for deaf youth looking for a job. Partners use a research template to ensure consistent information collection and topics are divided between partners. When the research phase is concluded, content is translated into written language and glossed for sign language translation. The animated video templates are produced by equalizent, and partners film the sign language moderation to overlay on the template. Completed videos are uploaded to the multilingual project platform. Testing throughout is undertaken by deaf youth and representatives of associated partners and other stakeholders (working and focus groups). Output 2 consists of 40 career guidance videos in 4 sign languages (160 videos) which focus on the daily tasks of a particular job, presented by a deaf role model. The careers and interview subjects are carefully chosen to augment the videos already available. The Dutch and Italian sign language version of CHECK YOUR PROFILE is filmed and added to the platform. Testing as described above. Output 3 Consists of a training course based on the topics of the tutorial videos in Output 1. A curriculum and a handbook are produced and piloted by 10 deaf youth in each country. The output is tested (as above). Output 4 is the development of an evaluation tool and guidelines on how to measure the quality of the sign language content. An information video is filmed at the MEs in each country, showcasing the outputs and the skills and achievements of the deaf youth themselves. Dissemination is undertaken using a mix of online and face-to-face approaches, project-specific channels using the existing CPI website and social media channels, as well as existing partner channels, websites, social media channels, and newsletters. We utilise existing contacts, fora and conferences to ensure the project is widely disseminated. Deaf community acceptance and use of project outputs ensures greater long-term sustainability.<< Results >>Deaf youth are empowered and informed in their choice of a future career, have access to and use bilingual digital tools and have augmented their transferable skillset. Verifiable indicators: By 2024, more than 100 deaf youth have used the tools independently. By the end of the project, 40 deaf youth have acquired transferable skills visible in their youth pass. By the end of the project, 80% of deaf youth participants express greater empowerment. 20 institutes, organisations and schools use the tools in their training programmes and career guidance.Output 1 - explanation videos: 9 animated explanation videos are available in 4 sign languages (SPJ, ÖGS, NGT, LIS), so a total of 36 videos. 20 deaf youth have tested the tutorials 20 institutes are informed about the tutorials and have tested them.Output 2 - Professions : Digital information on 40 selected careers is available in sign languages / in a multimedia format CHECK YOUR PROFILE is available in Dutch and Italian. 40 career guidance videos in SPJ, ÖGS, NGT, LIS (160 in total) 20 deaf youth have tested the tools 20 institutes are informed about the tools and have tested them . Output 3 - Training: Curriculum, blended learning training course and accompanying digital handbook on skills needed for job applications. Curriculum, training course & handbook available in English, German, Slovak, Dutch and Italian for download on the website. Training has been piloted by 40 deaf youth. 20 institutes, organisations are informed about the training and have tested it.Output 4 - Evaluation: an evaluation tool and guidelines on how to measure the quality of the sign language content. 5 evaluations (1 for each output of CPI and CPI 2.0). 1 final evaluation with guidelines to produce accessible teaching materials for deaf youth.4 MEs have taken place with at least 200 participants 80% of the user (tester) feedback is positive Effective dissemination of the project goals, activities and outputs has taken place.

In the EU member states, approximately 750.000 people are deaf from an early age and use a sign language as their preferred language. Deaf people not only have their own language, but also their own culture: Deaf Culture. The education of deaf children has a long -, and controversial - history going back centuries. Today, most hearing people do know about sign language, but they may know little or nothing about Deaf Culture, Deaf Education.Deaf Clubs, for centuries the centres of Deaf Culture, are disappearing quickly or have vanished already. Most deaf children are now mainstreamed. As a result, the heritage of Deaf people is at risk. In the Deaf Museums project, we will develop Open Educational Resources (OER), including an online training course in museum and general entrepreneurial skills for and by Deaf sign language users, to promote, preserve and share the Deaf Heritage.The Deaf Museums project has 2 long term goals:1.To promote, preserve and share the Deaf Heritage and by doing so: to promote Deaf awareness in the widest sense possible.2.To improve the employability of Deaf sign language users and the success of Deaf entrepreneurs by providing them with the necessary mindset and skills.In so doing, it will support the Erasmus+ goals for the participants in Strategic Partnerships: increased capacity and professionalism to work at EU/international level: improved management competences and internationalisation strategies; reinforced cooperation with partners from other countries and other cultures. Short term objectives of the project are:1.To develop online Open Educational Resources including a training course in basic Museum skills, for and by Deaf sign language users. The course will include examples, guidelines, signed stories and case studies, all produced and/or tested by the participants in the project. Included will be topics that state of the art mainstream museums are addressing: “Who are museums for and why are they working to engage new audiences? How do visitors respond emotionally to museum objects and spaces? And how can museums play a role in the pursuit of social justice, human rights, or health and well being?” (https://www.culturepartnership.eu/en/article/5-free-online-courses-for-museum-workers). Special attention will be given to the use of social media and ICT tools. All information will be in International Sign, written English, and as many of the partners’ signed and written languages as possible.2.To output case studies and good examples of museum exhibitions (e.g. about Deaf Culture, Deaf Art, Deaf people during WWII, Deaf migrants, Deaf in the European Union), produced by the participants in the project. The case studies and exhibitions will be included as examples in the training course and will be used to promote the project and disseminate its results both during and after the project's lifetime. 3.To research the state of the art in this field through surveys and interviews, to use the results to set up a platform for the promotion of real and virtual Deaf museums and Deaf Heritage initiatives, nationally, across Europe and globally, and to promote and support transnational collaboration in this field.Methodology and participating organisationsThe participating organisations represent a diverse mix of organisations from different fields of education, training, and other socio-economic sectors, including institutes of higher education, NGO's and SME's, from 7 European countries. In the consortium, participants from 'the Deaf world' and from the 'mainstream Museum world' will work together to produce high quality results and output by sharing and comparing each other's expertise. Our methodology will be based on peer-learning and challenge-based learning. Partners as well as several invited experts will share their expertise in specific fields. Partners will be asked to find solutions for the challenges that Museums in general, and Deaf Museums in particular have to deal with. They will learn practical entrepreneurial skills by planning, producing, promoting and evaluating the exhibitions that they will develop during the project. At each consortium meeting, they will be interviewed about the work they have done and about lessons learned. These interviews will be included in the OER and will be used to disseminate information about the project, both during and after the project's lifetime.Impact and potential longer term benefitsInterest in the Deaf Heritage and Deaf Culture and how to preserve and share these, has been growing rapidly in recent years. Therefore, we expect the project to have a major impact on Deaf people and Deaf Organisations in general, and on Deaf Museums and similar initiatives in particular. We also expect the project to have impact on mainstream Museum professionals. Long term benefits: bridging gaps between generations of Deaf people, between Deaf and hearing people, and between Deaf and mainstream Museum professionals.

"""Everybody should learn how to program because it teaches you how to think..."" Steve Jobs Digital access is a right and not a privilege, and as such the consortium pioneers to address the right for access and participation of a neglected group of young people/students with deafness and/or hearing impairment to introduce them to the world of coding and robotics thus opening up for them new routes for careers orientation and further studies.Programming and computational thinking skills are becoming ever more important in our society and working life. Today, a growing number of countries in Europe and internationally are refocusing their ICT curricula on developing students’ computer programming and coding skills, and introducing the topic in national, regional or school curricula.The European Commission's European Disability Strategy 2010-2020, adopted in 2010, builds on the UNCRPD which emphasis is that accessibility, participation, equality, education and training and others aspects are of great importance. Based on the above the project addresse the following priorities:HORIZONTAL: Strengthening the profiles of the teaching professionThe target group of school teachers (mainly IT or from related fields or any other interested in the field of coding and robotics) who work with students-young people with deafness or hearing impariment either in formal schools (mainstream schools or special schools or school for deaf or special units as per the regulations in each partner country) or in non-formal settings. In this group, the consortium includes sign language teacher who are interested to be educated to support and help students with deafness to learn how to code and how to program a robot, who can have various backgrounds. The profiles of the above teachers will be upgraded and strengthened through the professional development programme to be developed to acquire the digital, coding and robotics skills to support students. All the material to be developed as part of the INCLUSIVE DUAL ROBOTICS4DEAF PACK both on-line and off-line accompanied with multi-media tools and resources to target the needs and requiement of students with deafness will support teachers’ practices. HORIZONTAL: Social inclusion The project targets students with deafness and hearing impairments. Deaf people are very different in their way to communicate with the hearing world; however they share a common barrier in the language. Language is not developed as typically in childhood, due to the lack of input, both from a quantitative (bilateral neurosensory hearing loss in the volume of sound perceived in decibels), and from a qualitative point of view (type of sounds perceived on frequencies measured in hertz). As a result language of deaf and hard of hearing children is often insufficient, both in comprehension and in production. In understanding, deaf people can use a compensatory strategy for the impairment (such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, subtitles), and/or with a real alternative language, the Sign Language.Disability is thus not just a health problem. It is a complex phenomenon, reflecting the interaction between features of a person’s body and features of the society in which he or she lives. Overcoming the difficulties interventions to remove environmental and social barriers. As a result the main aims of the project are to:- ensure access, participation and inclusion of students in the digitalised labour market as purported by the 2018 Digital Education Action Plan- ensure gender equality and non-discrimination for girls in relation to supporting the access to digital technologies and skills. The project aims to equip the above group of young people/students with digital, robotics and coding skills in order to support their employability prospects and ensure social inclusion in the digitalisation of the labour market.HORIZONTAL: Supporting individuals in acquiring and developing basic skills and key competences HORIZONTAL: Open education and innovative practices in a digital era In the above context the project comes to address the recommendation of the recent EC Report titled “New priorities for EU cooperation ET 2020” Report (COM 2015- 408), which stresses that “knowing how to code is empowering. It allows to understand the digital world we live in and to shape it. Basic coding skills are essential for accessing the jobs of tomorrow and today” and for achieving a better skills-match between education and the world of work. “Coding is seen as the red thread that runs through future professions”.The 2016 ‘Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition’ reinforces the need of all to help meet the high demand for digital skills in Europe which are essential in today's job market and society. Europe is lacking digitally skilled persons to fill job vacancies in all sectors, missing out on up to 750,000 Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) professional jobs by 2020."

On one hand, integrating young Deaf people into the job market is a key challenge; a high percentage of them are unemployed, and those who are employed are often in low-skilled and low-paid jobs. Nowadays, the education on offer for Deaf people in Europe is sparse, and heavily focused on school and apprenticeships, rather than long-term employment. With EU funding, it is necessary to export its concept across Europe, boosting training for Deaf people, helping them to find jobs.Every European citizen has got equal rights in participating at the active and democratic life of Europe and language is the most important instrument to communicate and convey ideas and feelings. For this reason, since Sign Languages are the mother tongues of many Deaf youth, it is important to promote the use of Sign Languages in every context in order to facilitate their empowerment and inclusion.On the other hand, the concept of a museum is no longer just a physical place where artworks are collected and housed, but is conceived as an active institution that should offer a diversified range of services to make art and culture accessible to all people with disabilities. Museums need to adapt to a diversifying society and shall offer accessibility to inclusive, comprehensive and creative educational experiences that embrace and foster cultural, social diversity, and provide to everyone the ability to live and participate equally in a pluralistic society. Based on this framework, the main project objective is to find ways to diversify the museum, its interpretative tools and practices in order to become a tool for Deaf youth social inclusion. For this purpose, the partnership built an educational model engaging Deaf youth in art training for becoming museum guides for Deaf audience, so to favor their social and working inclusion, and the engagement of Deaf audience in the museums. The activities implemented in Austria, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Romania, Slovakia were as follows:-Context analysis in six partner countries collecting 30 existing learning experiences, services and activities to enable Deaf youth to learn about art and to increase the engagement of Deaf audience in the museums and in cultural activities. The results from the context analysis, in terms of knowledge, competences and approaches, represented the first contribution to the development of MADE educational model.-5-days learning activity addressed to 16 (and 6 additional participants) young Deaf and hearing trainers experienced in art disciplines or Deaf education from all partners countries in order to build new training model and curriculum to engage Deaf youth in art training for becoming museum guides.-Development of MADE educational model for Deaf youth, a tailor-made training programme including 4 learning modules aimed at enabling Deaf youth to acquire transversal skills and professional competences to become a museum guide. The Educational model and learning materials are available in the partners languages.-Development of a Toolkit meant as a virtual space hosting the learning and teaching materials developed within the Educational Model, available both in written partner languages and national Sign Languages as well as International Sign Language addressed to young Deaf trainees and trainers.-Implementation of six national study circles involving 60 Deaf and hearing trainers, experts in the field of art and Deaf teaching, museum institutions representatives for analyzing the Educational Model adapting it to the national contexts.-Testing of MADE educational model in six partners countries through the implementation of at least 30 teaching hours and the simulation of museum tour involving 85 Deaf youth and 27 Deaf and hearing trainers in cooperation with national museums.-Six multiplier events in the partner countries, involving 150 participants, aimed at presenting the MADE educational model advantages and methodology to the Deaf community, stakeholder organisations such as museum institutions, educational and training centers, public institutions working on the field of social inclusion and labour market.The main target groups involved in the activities were: Deaf youth, young Deaf and hearing trainers, museum institutions, VET providers working in the field of Deaf education, Deaf community and general public interested to the project topics.The project results positively impacted on the MADE target groups who directly or indirectly participated to the project activities. Mainly the young Deaf people benefited by the project results empowering their soft skills and professional competences so to undertake a new job opportunity. The other target groups benefited from the project activities by increasing their awareness of the need to diversify and offer educational programmes adapted to the specific needs of Deaf young people and by expanding opportunities to make art accessible to the whole Deaf community using sign language.