Sign Language is not a universal medium; on the contrary, each one has developed naturally over the years within its local community, exactly like oral languages. While there are in fact a number of international signs and gestures, used for example at international meetings and conferences for deaf people, these are a mere communication aid and cannot be considered a language. As a result, international communication between deaf people requires the learning of a foreign sign language, in precisely the same way as with people who can hear.However, despite the clear incentives to promote multilingualism provided by the European Commission’s VET policies, very few of the projects and learning materials created over the years have taken into consideration the needs of deaf people. Their opportunities to learn foreign sign languages therefore remain severely limited, which effectively represents a major obstacle to transnational communication between deaf people and therefore a limitation of their citizenship rights, particularly in terms of free circulation.Within this context, this project aims to:a) Carry out research into foreign sign language learning needs, identifying the most urgent communication needs;b) Create a common training programme for foreign sign language learning at elementary (A1/A2) level for Portuguese, British, Turkish and Austrian sign languages (NB: on the contrary to oral language, Austrian is different from German);c) Validate these programmes in schools for the deaf located in the partner countries by means of involving sign language trainers, who will therefore play a double role as both learners and trainers;d) Promote the learning of the sign languages of the partnership among all the entities working with the project, especially among trainers, teachers and researchers in this area;e) Promote the exchange of knowledge and experience among the professionals involved and among the deaf communities in each partner country;f) Facilitate the learning of a foreign sign language directly from the native sign language, i.e. without having to subject the learner to the intermediate acquisition of the respective written languages.The GIVE ME A SIGN project will, in this way, make an important contribution towards closing the knowledge gap regarding the learning of foreign sign languages, with special emphasis on removing the additional burden of having to previously learn the respective written languages. This is itself represents a major innovation in this area. The project will therefore facilitate communication between the deaf communities across Europe and consequently open the doors to mobility for this target population, which will in turn contribute decisively towards ensuring equal opportunities. GIVE ME A SIGN also aims to promote the recognition of European sign languages as official languages of each country, and indeed as part of the national heritage of each member state in just the same way as the oral languages of the EU, this contributing towards public awareness of the value of this form of communication.In the medium term, the results of this project will subsequently serve as the foundations for a second project in which, based on the findings of our research and the resulting creation of learning programmes, the partnership will begin to create learning content and materials, with particular emphasis on mobile applications to assist the learning of foreign sign languages. This is an ideal platform, given the limitless visual possibilities of tools such as Skype or FaceTime. Our ultimate goal is therefore to work towards a situation in which the learning of foreign sign languages becomes not only much easier but also a realistic curricular option for training institutes working with deaf people, so that in the not too distant future these trainees will be able to finally participate on equal terms in transnational professional mobility initiatives. GIVE ME A SIGN is therefore expected to become a reference for the teaching and learning of foreign sign languages. On a global level, over 110 million citizens use sign languages as part of everyday communication. This number includes the deaf, their families, their teachers and auxiliaries, among many others, and is a number which cannot and should not be ignored, given the expected impact of this ground-breaking project. In addition, the dissemination of the project aimed to reach many millions more, by developing awareness among those able to hear, of the advantages not only of learning to communicate with the deaf, but also of ensuring they are included as equals in both everyday and professional life.

<< Objectives >>The project focuses on the obstacles faced by the hearing impaired in their vocational training. Flexible and learner-centered teaching programs and materials will be developed for them. The outcomes of the project will be made available to everyone online and in open access, in a structure that does not require a membership system. Thus, the project will contribute to the transition of the hearing impaired to the labor market and to close the existing gaps in adults' access to education.<< Implementation >>Wp1: Preparation of eight modules that will form the Financial Literacy teaching curriculum for the Hearing Impaired Individuals,Wp2: Preparation of Financial Literacy Readiness Level Measurement Tool for the Hearing Impaired IndividualsWp3: Preparation of Digital Teaching Materials of Financial Literacy Teaching Curriculum for Hearing Impaired Individuals Wp4: Preparation of Financial Literacy Sign Language Glossary of Terms3 TPM, 1 LTT Activity, 2 ME Activity will be carried out.<< Results >>•Financial Literacy curriculum will be prepared for the hearing impaired,•A measurement and assessment tool will be prepared to determine the readiness levels of the users,•A measurement and assessment tool will be prepared in order to determine the level of users after vocational training,•Financial Literacy distance education digital contents for the hearing impaired will be prepared,•Financial Literacy glossary of terms will be prepared in sign language.

In Turkey the number of people with disabilities is approximately 8,5 million (ÖZİDA 2002). 3,5 million of them are consisted of children and they require special education (PEKUSLU&KAYACI,2007). If those children are considered as if they had a family which has got at least 2 members, the number of individuals who are affected by it primarily reach at least 10,5 milllion. This number goes up by higher amounts when the stuff taking care of these children such as educater, sanitarian etc has been taken into consideration. It can clearly be seen how much special education is important even looking from this perspective.Children with special needs have limited attention span and their attention can easily be distracted. They have difficulty in understanding words or concepts. The studies Show that computer assisted learning increases the motivation level of disabled students and it enables them to increase their attention span so that they enjoy studying. Also the studies comparing the contents of traditional education programs and computer assisted program shows that computer assisted programs are more effective in learning process of children with special needs. With the help of Computer Assisted Programs, disabled children can become active members of society who can sustain a social and occupational life independently. Blue Platform is a complete free of charge platform that is available for all children with special needs, their parents and their teachers. Target audience of this project are the individuals with special needs, the ones with medium-heavy mental deficiency and the ones with autism spectrum disorder. In 2018 National Ministry of Education renovated the curriculum of individuals with medium-heavy mental deficiency and autism spectrum disorder. Blue Platform has been designed according to this new curricula. Blue Platform includes the targets of levels and syllabus on the list down below.Level 1: Maths, Reading and Writing Skills, Social Skills, Social StudiesLevel 2: Maths, Reading and Writing Skills, Social Skills, Daily Life SkillsLevel 3: Maths, Reading and Writing Skills, Communication and Social Skills, Independent Living SkillsThe main goal of Blue Platform is to make a contribution to the equality of opportunity in special education. Blue Platform is totally free of charge and will always remain free of charge. IMPARK, one of the partner institutions which has built the engineering sytem of our project stated that they would carry on saving the system on their servers as long as the company exist. This statement added priceless value to the project in term of sustainability and upgradablity.Blue Platform is designed for being used as a supplementary material. The way how you use it is very simple. Pupils can use it with the help of their teachers or parents an deven by themselves in an easy way. Blue Platform is a web based Learning Management System (LMS). It does not require set-up. It is available on every smarts board or computer with internet connection. Training screens starts with learning section and after that part it carries on with the reinforcement part. After they cover the lessons, some reinforcement tools such as games, songs, animations, stories etc. that are to achieve the goals of the lessons appear on the screen. There are school module, teacher module and parent module sections.Intellectual Outputs:O1/Blue Special LMS: The first intellectual output of the project, LMS, is the core of Blue Platform.O2/Learning Contents: The learning contents of Blue Platform that engineering studies has been carried out in the previous output, have been prepared in O2 part.O3/Preparing Animations for Educational Objectives: Animation added to Blue Platform has been prepared on O3 intellectual output. It is not only limited with animations, plenty of videos were also prepared.O4/Preparing Games for Educational Objectives: Assistive technology in the field of education opens greater opportunities for disabled children to become fully active members in learning period. Didactic computer games are also one of them. Games being added to Blue Platform has been prepared on O4. O5/Vocalizations: Vocalizations of Blue Platform has been done on O5.Pilot scheme of Blue Platform has started on 28th May 2018 with the participation of more than 70 special education teachers from 20 different cities. With the help of feedbacks received from the teachers, optimizations and refinements have been done. All the results of survey on pilot scheme are available on official website of our project.Under the theme of Universal Design in Information Technologies, BİLTEVT2019, the International Barrier-Free Informatics Congress held on between 11-13th September 2019 with inter-institutional cooperation hosted by Maltepe University. Blue Platform was granted Barrier-Free Informatics Award. For being our first award really precious to us, it gave much more determination to work on our project.

Tourist guide is the person who will introduce the country to domestic and foreign tourists in the best way, help them during their travels, provide accurate information, and have a professional authority certificate (TUREB 2006: 246).Especially in tourism, which is based on cultural heritage, sufficient knowledge and high quality tour guidance service should be provided (Dahles, 2002: 783).İZRO is one of the most important occupational chambers serving the tourist guides of our country.It organizes continuous face-to-face training activities for the personal and professional development of its members.The uncertainty in the working hours of the tourist guiding profession, intense and tiring working conditions, and the ignoring of the personal life, personal, professional and educational works of the guides during the organization of the tour programs are expressed as an important professional problem for tourist guides (Doswell, 1997: 3).Due to the working conditions of the members, it is generally not possible to participate in the training activities.The research carried out by İZRO in 2019 in the form of tourist guides throughout the country confirms this situation.72% of the tour guides participating in the survey study and focus group meetings stated that vocational and personal training activities should be on digital and online platforms (İZRO, Determination of Personal and Professional Development Activities, 2019).The tourism industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in the world.It has become an important advantage to develop new tourism types in an increasingly competitive environment and attract more tourists with new destinations.One of the most important types of tourism sector is the disabled tourism market.The European Hearing Impaired Federation (EFHOH) stated in its report titled “Hearing Loss: The Statistics” published in 2015, although it is difficult to know the exact number of hearing impaired in the world and in Europe, an estimated 9% of the population of the European Union with 507.4 million.He states that approximately 50 million people are deaf.This is a huge number and represents an important tourist potential.The tour guides who participated in the Determination of Personal and Vocational Training Activities; It is accessible for 60% of tour guides to know sign language, 60% of them encounter hearing-impaired individuals on their tours, 93% of them have communication problems with these people, 100% believe that they can communicate with these people even if they have the opportunity to learn sign language.He stated that he contributed to the idea that he would contribute to tourism completely or partially, and that 96% of the tour guides participated in the idea that tour guides would contribute to the tourism and increase the number of tourists.Our reason for preparing our project is our belief that we will produce a practical and quick solution to these needs.Our project will meet a very important need of the hearing impaired, support the participation in social and cultural life, and ensure that our country and project partner countries become competitive in the tourism market for the disabled.Our target groups are families of hearing-impaired individuals as well as hearing-impaired individuals, sign language users, hearing-guided tour guides and tourism industry.The idea of ​​our project was through output works;• An Education Management System that tour guides and other interested parties can use free of charge,• Sign language curriculum for tourism and tour guides at A1 and A2 levels,• Training materials at A1 and A2 levels,• A Tourism Sign Language Dictionary will be created in the A1 and A2 programs and in the field of tourism with frequently used signs. The titles of our management activities are as follows: A1.Project Management, A2.Dissemination, A3.Monitoring and Evaluation, A4.Activities That Will Create a Multiplier Effect. Within the scope of our project, many multiplier activities and three Multiplier Events are planned. Multiplier events activities are as follows. E1-A1 Level, E2-A2 Level Promotion and Evaluation Conference E3-''Vocational Sign Language on Tourism '' Project Promotion Conference Our project has three transnational meetings and an educational activity. M1-Opening, M2-Evaluation, M3-Final Meeting. Our training activity will be held in Portugal and the two focal points of training are as follows: a.LMS Admin Panel Management, User Panel and Technical Training b.Management TrainingOur project priorities are the disabled - special needs, open and distance education, foreign language teaching and learning. In addition, our project contributes to the overall objectives of the Erasmus + Program, especially education, the goals of the Europe 2020 Strategy, the strategic framework goals for European cooperation in education and training (ET 2020), the goals of raising European values, and multilingualism.

When Turkey Disability Survey and Turkey Employment Agency’s data are examined together, the maximum of %15 of hearing impaired individuals are capable to work and only 5% of them are employed. It can be said that, 95% of hearing impaired individuals are unemployed. The target audience of our Project is hearing impaired individuals between the ages of 18-30 who don’t have any business.The basic desire of the hearing impaired individuals is to find a respectable place in society by producing as every healthy human. To participate in their social life, depends to sustain independent living. The most important way to ensure this is employment. If hearing impaired individuals work, produce and gain, they participate in social life and get happy. Unemployment is a huge problem. The most important aim for the hearing impaired should be to remove this issue from the agenda of them. Our main reason for making this Project is to prepare a new certification program for hearing impaired individuals in order to provide employment.With this study, we will educate hearing impaired tour guides who use sign language and we will offer different job opportunities to hearing impaired people by creating a new model of vocational training. A training program is not available in this area. If appropriate educational areas are created, numerous hearing impaired people may be employed in this sector. Well trained persons with disabilities will have more opportunities to have a job. This study is a first and completely original work to open a new field of employment for hearing impaired citizens in our country. At first, the participants that we trained will work with professional tour guides as assistants. There isn’t a certificate program for hearing impaired individuals for being tour guides with cockades in our country. This certificate program will be created within our project. Project Partners:Doncaster Deaf Trust (England)Fundación Pública Andaluza el Legado Andalusí (Spain)Istituto Statale Sordi (Italy)Asociatia Tedy Bear (Romania)Turkish National Federation of the DeafChamber of the Guides of İzmir (İZRO)Buca AcademyThroughout the process, we aim to convert the certificate program that we have prepared as a tour guide of a Deaf Faculty in a university. After compilation of our project, the results that we aim to achieve can be summarized below.• Developing the Tour Guide Certificate Program” for hearing disabled.• Creating a new employment area for hearing impaired people.• To provide guidence for domestic and foreign hearing impaired individuals.• To create a workforce that can adapt to evolving technology and can struggle with the competitive market technology by giving better quality of vocational training. • Giving importance to sign language training in vocational education area.• Understanding different applications resulting from intercultural recognition.• Participants will have the opportunity learn the mother tongue and sign language of the country they visited also can explain their language and develop their foreign language.The methodology of our project can be summarized as a route map consisting of 5 steps.a. Preparation of Projectb. Conceptual Designc. Applicationd. Continuous assessment and evaluatione. Dissemination and SustainabilityOur project is a 24 months study and the operating plan adopted by all of our partners are as follows. Preparation Of General Meeting (Turkey)Preparation Of General Meeting (Spain)General Preparation MeetingSelection Of Youth Hearing Impaired PartıcipantsPreparation Of Lesson PlansBasic Turkish Sign Language EducationEnglish Language TeachingVocational Training Courses-Section 1Vocational Training Courses-Section 2 Preparation Of International Sign Language (ISL) EducationISL Training Preparation Of Evaluation Meeting and Tourism TrainingEvaluation MeetingTourism TrainingPreparations Of Vocational Training Application In Field (Aegean Region)Vocational Training Application In Field (Aegean Region)Preparations Of Vocational Training Application In Field (Abroad)Vocational Training Application In Field (Abroad )Collection Of Assessment Results, Finalization And Reporting The Study Intellectual Outputs - Preparation Of Vocational Education Certificate Program.Fulfillment of the first meeting, the distribution of tasks.Determination of Vocational and Applied Education, Foreign Language and ISL training.Determination of Norms of National Occupational Standards Determination of Qualification LevelPreparation of Intellectual Outputs BookPreparation Of Final meetings Preparation of Multiplier EventsFinal Meeting in Izmir/TurkeyMultiplier Events/ İstanbul ConferenceMultiplier Events/Ankara ConferencePreparation of the Project Booklet and Final ReportPublishing Project Booklet