Dear subscribers

First of all, we would like to wish you a Happy New Year 2021!

This newsletter is going to be on the new projects we are starting from this month along with current projects. It will surely be an interesting year for us all.

Kind regards
Mark Wheatley

SHAPES:

The Smart & Healthy Ageing through People Engaging in Supportive Systems

The EU-funded SHAPES project aims to create the first European open Ecosystem enabling the large-scale deployment of a broad range of digital solutions for supporting and extending healthy and independent living for such older individuals.

  Read more  ➞

aiD:

aRTIFICIAL iNTELLIGENCE for the Deaf

aiD aims to address the challenge of deaf people communication and social integration by leveraging the latest advances in ML, HCI and AR. Specifically, speech-to-text/text-to-speech algorithms have currently reached high performance, as a product of the latest breakthrough advances in the field of deep learning (DL). However, the commercially available systems cannot be readily integrated into a solution targeted to the communication between deaf and hearing people. On the other hand, existing research efforts to tackle the problem of transcribing SL video or generating synthetic SL footage (SL avatar) from text have failed to generate a satisfactory outcome.

  Read more  ➞

Justisigns 2:

Supporting victims of gender-based violence

JUSTISIGNS 2 is an educational and training project created to improve access to support services in gender based violence (GBV) cases by increasing awareness and providing training to multi agency actors who engage with victims.

  More about the project  ➞

Deaf Museums in Europe:

The Deaf Heritage and History

Deaf Museums are a group of people from 7 organizations in 6 European countries. The project will be funded by the EU, the starting date is 1 October 2020.

The project’s aims are to preserve the Deaf Heritage, Deaf History. And not only preserve, also: protect, display and share!

The history and its timeline in the Deaf Heritage are already written in the books. It is just as important to preserve and share how things are NOW to help Deaf people, now and in the future, to understand their lives, their culture, their world. History is important. It helps us understand ourselves, our communities, our world.

The goal of this project will be producing a number of ‘good examples’ to show what we, you, everyone can do to preserve and share the Deaf Heritage. And a guideline will be published, focusing on ‘how to contribute on the preservation of the Deaf Heritage.’

And share your experiences, with us, with the world!

Let’s protect and share the Deaf Heritage, Deaf History together!

  Read more  ➞

EASIER:

Intelligent Automatic Sign Language Translation

The EASIER project aims to create a framework for barrier-free communication among deaf and hearing citizens across Europe by enabling users of European Sign Languages (SL) to use their preferred language to interact with hearing individuals.

EUD will play a key role in the EASIER Consortium by user involvement by bringing in the deaf community for needs analysis, specifications, design, feedback and evaluation.

  Read more  ➞

Leave no one behind the European Parliament:

EUD's first project with the European Parliament

EUD is pleased to share with you the agreement of co-financing, by the European Parliament, on citizens' engagement action in the framework of the work programme for the grants in communication 2020-2021 which will run from January 2021 to June 2022.

The aim of this Communication Project called Accessible democratic processes for all: leave no one behind the European Parliament, is to make the European Parliament’s communications on the post-COVID-19 recovery plan more accessible for the deaf Europeans and enable their full and equal participation in the EU. Including increasing deaf citizens’ awareness of the role and democratic values of the European Union by promoting strategic engagement with the EU.

For a year and a half, in collaboration with the European Parliament, EUD will address 4 relevant topics in the framework of the post-COVID-19 recovery plan through accessible videos in International Sign, accessible webinar, and interview with MEP.

  Read more  ➞

SignON:

Automatic translation application

SignON Project aims to facilitate the exchange of information among deaf and hearing individuals across Europe targeting the Irish, British, Dutch, Flemish and Spanish Sign Languages and English, Irish, Dutch, Spanish spoken languages.

EUD will fulfill a central role in co-creation and user response and report on user requirements to support the SignON Consortium by defining use-cases, co-design and co-develop the SignON service and application.

  Read more  ➞

DESEAL:

Deaf Senior Education for Active Living

DESEAL (Deaf Senior Education for Active Living) is a project with 4 partners from Italy, Austria, France and Belgium. The project promotes equality, non-discrimination and diversity for older Deaf people through the provision of accessible digital information.

By providing training materials for deaf seniors to enable them to access information and acquire the digital skills required in the modern world, especially in the field of finance, banking and social security.

This means that Deaf seniors can find support and information online in their first language – Sign Language. As well as Italian, Austrian, French and International Sign language, we use plain language, pictures, graphics and animation to make the information easier to understand.

  Read more  ➞