Disability Rights Argentina Project #39291

Help Deaf Children learn to read and write

by Canales Asociacion Civil

Project Report | Jun 6, 2022
Schools in all provinces of the country already have our textbook

By Silvana Bonnet | Head of Communication

Number of downloads in each province of Argentina.

In Argentina, many deaf children and adolescents encounter barriers to exercise their right to access literacy. One of those barrieres is the lack of educational materials designed for them. To break down these barriers, Canales’ team designed a textbook for teaching Spanish, which is their second language and the one that allows them to read and write Spanish, the official language in Argentina

“Reading and writing - 3 . Stories of my community”, is a textbook created for and by deaf people, which includes: a book for teachers, one for students, videos in Argentinian Sign Language (LSA) to contextualize each unit, and ICT activities. It is available on our website and was launched at the end of 2021.

We have analyzed the data for this first half of the year and it has already exceeded 500 downloads! Bearing in mind that there are approximately 100 schools for the deaf in Argentina, this is an excellent start. In each of the 24 provinces of our country someone has already shown interest and downloaded this Textbook. According these users, more than 75% of the downloads come from those who work in the educational sector and about 15% are students.

We also found that this educational material has aroused interest in 10 countries. Although the deaf communities of each country have their own sign language, Spanish is the second language of this population in all of them, showing that it is an innovative and replicable project.

We are on the right track to ensure that more deaf children and adolescents become literate. ¡Join us with your donation so that more schools have this multimedia textbook!

Guido from Haedo - Buenos Aires using the textbook

Teachers spontaneously recommend our textbooks

Links:

Download the textbook

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Feb 6, 2022
Help us create Textbooks for deaf students!

By Silvana Veinberg | Executive Director

Deaf actors after their first shot

Argentine Sign Language (LSA) is the first and natural language of deaf children y Argentina. Spanish, is there second language. However, there are no educational materials used in schools that take this fact into consideration.

Therefore, some years ago and with the help of donors like you, we started thinking of new ways to face this problem and we came up with an innovative solution: textbooks designed from a deaf perspective, using Sign Language as the basic language.

What are the innovations in this project? Well, the fact that Spanish is considered a Second Language for deaf students is new for most teachers. Secondly, this piece of material includes videos in LSA in order to contextualize the content of each Unit and videos performed by deaf actors showing and explaining parts of the content.

Furthermore, besides the regular activities, we incorporate ICT activities for students to learn how to cope with technology and learning.

Thanks to the help of donors, we already created three textbooks in different Spanish levels.

We recently presented “Reading and Writing 3 - Stories from my community”, a new textbook to teach Spanish as a second language to adolescents from the deaf community.

This handbook - in digital format - continues the "Read and write" series and incorporates past and present stories of the deaf community in Argentina and other countries to make visible and recreate their linguistic and cultural heritage.

It is made up of a BOOK FOR TEACHERS and an illustrated ACTIVITY BOOK that includes videos in LSA with Spanish subtitles and ICT activities with tutorials, which can be accessed online.

Each of the 5 units promotes, through activities, research, reading, the production of written texts for social circulation, analysis, critical thinking and knowledge of people and institutions that are relevant to the deaf community.

We are already thinking of stepping to the next level! Please come and join us with your donation!

Deaf actors talking about female rugby

Deaf actress introducing visual arts

Book cover

Links:

Link to download the textbook

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Oct 11, 2021
Deaf children in isolation during the pandemic

By Silvana Veinberg | Executive Director

deaf girl at storytelling festival

Covid-19 has blasted through deaf children’s lives as never before.

Why?

As most deaf children do not share their language with their families, they get their first contact with sign language at school. Deaf schools are the only place in which little deaf children can acquire Sign language, their natural language, and where older children have the opportunity to improve their linguistic skills by sharing their ideas with others, conversing in their own language, and learning and interacting in a fully accessible environment.

The exclusion of deaf children at home has become all too glaring during the pandemic. Suddenly, their tiny accessible world disappeared; they lost communication with their surroundings and they were in serious danger of falling through the cracks..

This critical situation quickly activated our interinstitutional network. We realized that within this setting our educational materials would serve as a bridge for deaf children to get in touch with content and literature in Sign Language from home.

Our recommendations and accessible videos have reached thousands of children that would have stayed otherwise excluded. Unicef Latinamerica and the Caribbean called us to integrate a task force team for children with disabilities. The National Congress Library created an accessible resource platform for children’s books in which our Videobooks and other stories in Sign Language have been shared.

Likewise, the Ministries of Education in both the capital city and in the province of Buenos Aires disseminated videobooks in their programs to accompany their students during isolation.

The Ministry of Culture, through their platform “Culture at Home”, spread our websites with stories of elderly deaf adults and also included the stories that took part in the “Storytelling in Sign Language” contest organized by Canales.

It has become abundantly clear that deaf children need special educational material in order to have the autonomy to study at home.

We need to increase the number of videos in Argentine Sign Language for deaf children to have equal opportunities to access quality education.

Let’s do it together, join us!

deaf adults interact with deaf children

Enjoying digital Videobooks at home

Digitalizing sign language videos during isolation

Launching new Videobooks during the pandemic

We keep working from home!

Links:

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