MAKING ONLINE EDUCATIONAL CONTENT ACCESSIBLE IN GREEK SIGN LANGUAGE

Greek Sign Language (GSL) was recognized as an official language in 2000 [1], but was not until 2017 [2] that it finally gained equal status with Modern Greek (MG). Considering the above facts, it is not surprising that available electronic resources in GSL are far from abundant. Even scarcer are original resources that have been generated by the deaf and hard-of-hearing (HoH) community itself. In addition to that, the vast majority of the plethora of Greek content available online, including educational materials, is not presented in GSL. In order for this newly recognized official language to stop being underrepresented in the online world, plenty of quality resources need to be uploaded and freely available to the general public. As is the case with most vocal languages, the more the good online content, the better the chances teachers and learners have to use it effectively in education. Furthermore, the availability of electronic material makes it easier for researchers to explore the language and develop better tools and services for end users. In this paper, we refer to a successful attempt to integrate a workbench incorporating language resources and Language Technology (LT) tools into a complete online system, which enables accessibility by native GSL signers of both original GSL material and MG content. The system currently consists of a bilingual dictionary (MG-GSL), a virtual keyboard for fingerspelling, and a tool for dynamic synthesis of sign phrases. As a pilot application, this system has been integrated in an official platform of the Greek Ministry of Education, containing educational content for the primary and secondary levels.