CEUR Proceedings 4th Workshop HCP Human Centered Processes, February 10-11, 2011 A Collaborative Approach for Supporting Interaction among Hearing Impaired and Listeners Samuel O. Apolonio (samuel.apolonio@gmail.com), Luciane C. J. de Deus (lujasmin@gmail.com), Marcos R. S. Borges (mborges@nce.ufrj.br), Adriana Vivacqua (avivacqua@gmail.com) Graduate Program in Informatics Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Cidade Universitária, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Abstract American Speech-Language-Hearing Association it represents 60% of communication disorders. Thus, this Hearing impairment was indicated as the second difficulty interferes directly in the interaction with largest proven deficiency in world population. hearing individuals. People with such disabilities face many obstacles in People with hearing impairment may have affected their communication and interaction with listeners, their learning and their integral development, since even with equal level of cognitive development. language plays an essential role in perceptual Collaborative tools offer the possibility to improve organization and the receipt and structuring of the interaction between listeners and hearing information, learning and social interactions of human impaired subjects. This study presents an approach to beings. For Gatto (2007) the hearing is a pre-requisite for support this type of interaction aimed to augment the development and acquisition of language. Hearing and participation of hearing impaired in collective language functions are interrelated and interdependent. activities. The approach has been materialized in a Despite these data, the hearing impaired subjects are collaborative writing tool on which participants from not easily recognized in society as people who have both categories work together to produce a common distinct needs. This recognition occurs when they need to document. The approach was evaluated by means of communicate, because of the difficulty they present using an experiment conducted with listeners and hearing oral colloquial language. This difficulty directly impaired students in a learning environment. interferes in the interaction with listeners. Analysis of the results obtained in the experiment According to Capovilla (1998), technology should aim show that the collaborative writing enhanced the to solve human problems and the solution should not interaction and contributes to a more harmonious and discriminate any type of person. It should look real coexistence among listeners and hearing universally the situations faced by humans, assuring them impaired. full participation in the environment they live. Thus, we should also use technology to help those who have Introduction disabilities in having a life as normal as possible. The WHO (World Health Organization) estimates that New technologies offer good alternatives to facilitate 10% of the population of developed countries is interaction among individuals communication. In this composed of people with a disability. In developing scenario, there is a powerful mechanism of interaction countries this rate is estimated between 12 and 15%. among individuals: the collaborative writing. This According to Smith (2003) among the world's population mechanism allows the diversity of knowledge and skills under the age of 15, approximately 62 million have and helps individuals who have difficulty to formalize permanent and hearing loss. Olusanya (2005) indicated certain knowledge or build a solution alone. Thus, that two-thirds (41 million people), live in developing problems can be better solved by a group of individuals countries. The incidence of hearing loss in newborns, working collaboratively, than by a single individual according to White (1993) is 1.5 to 5.95 per 1000 births. (Howard, 2000). In the literature, we also found that presbycusis - hearing The aim of this study is to analyze the contribution that loss due to age - is the main cause of hearing impairment collaborative writing can offer to improve the interaction in the elderly, with an incidence of about 30% of the among hearing impaired and listeners. To support this population over 65 years of age. The noise, especially in claim an experiment is proposed by mixing in each group the workplace, is appointed as the second leading cause listeners and hearing impaired subjects enrolled in a of sensorineural hearing loss among adults. Hearing common task: the production of a document in a impairment affects five percent of adult population in collaborative way. U.S., according to NCHS - National Center for Health This paper is divided as follows: Section 2 describes Statistics. In Brazil Hearing impairment stands out as the the communication aspects of hearing impaired persons. second largest proven deficiency in Brazilian population. Section 3 presents the collaborative writing process and Hearing impairment is characterized by total or partial its features that help collaboration among individuals. loss of ability to hear. It manifests as mild to moderate Section 4 describes an experiment conducted to evaluate hearing loss and severe or profound deafness. It is the benefits of technology supported collaboration in considered one of the main disorders that can interfere overcoming individual deficiencies. Section 5 analyzes with language development and speech. According to the 52 CEUR Proceedings 4th Workshop HCP Human Centered Processes, February 10-11, 2011 the results of this experiment and Section 6 presents the This is one of the major challenges of the interaction conclusions. between deaf and hearing people through writing. There are studies that link the technology-mediated Hearing Impaired Communication communication as a facilitator of integration. As reported Social networking has had a clear impact in the world, in the work of Santarosa (2003) with deaf and blind connecting people to find and create new friends, share people, that integration is provided communication ideas and organize events. Although social interactions interfaces to facilitate and support the interaction among are activities that have always happened naturally, on the these subjects. , with evidence from a blind person that Internet this process becomes more open and fluid corresponded with a colleague, using technological affecting the way people interact. These processes find resources, not knowing that this was deaf. In another their "natural" environment on the Internet, where social study Santarosa (2002) stresses that the use of electronic collaboration and dissemination of information is means, primarily e-mail, allows the advance in facilitated by recent innovations. development of the deaf, with a view to written According to Adams (2008) “The driving social communication and social interaction. behaviour now though is collaboration. The networks are established and have become part of the scenery. As Collaborative Writing people become confident social agents in online networks The human is in continuous biological development, they begin to act, to organise, to create.” influenced and influencing the social environment where Collaboration in social cooperation between he lives and exercises their interactions. He has natural individuals may have different objectives, both to make biological altruism as an individual and need to be part of life more pleasant and to supply their deficiencies. The human groups and to operate by consensus with them. computer is seen as pro-cognitive activity of structuring This need acts as a motivating factor in interactions with knowledge representations and also on emotional other individuals and thus the hearing impaired seeks to development (Oliveira, 1996). It is a resource for children overcome the difficulties of interaction. For this, the use with learning difficulties despite its shortcomings and of new technologies that facilitate this process is seen as limitations develop their cognitive capabilities and a good alternative. possibilities of their own. Many efforts have been made to develop solutions to Hearing impairment is a kind of sensorial restriction, facilitate this process. Among them, we highlight the whose main symptom is an atypical response to the sound development of multimodal interfaces, the use of tools stimulus, being classified accordingly to the degree of that make the association between text and video and hearing loss (Marchesi, 1996). However, Ciccone (1996) software that seek to provide collaborative practices, the states that the hearing impaired is an individual with groupware, more precisely the collaborative editors, potential normal cognitive, although the hearing loss object of this study. implies, often, in serious obstacles to its interaction with The basic development concept in multimodal listeners. interfaces for the disabled is the idea of modality According to Couto-Lenzi (1997), in interaction with replacement, which is the use of information originating hearing impaired, listeners should consider that among from various modalities to compensate for the missing the hearing impaired, some are born with hearing loss input modality of the users (Moustakas, 2006). and others lose their hearing after birth, during the pre- The tools that make the association between text and linguistic stage or after learning mother tongue, resulting videos can be used to associate texts in the mother tongue then, in different prognosis in the learning process and videos with the same text into sign language, accessible development of writing. to the hearing impaired. This distinction becomes relevant when interacting Among the groupware, we highlight the cooperative with deaf people since it implies a greater or lesser editors that allow the creation of texts in cooperation with degree of difficulty in the use of colloquial language two or more users. oralized, practiced by individuals listeners. Editing documents collaboratively or jointly with In accordance to Northern and Downs (1999), any others is a common task. Often, the documents we symbols that emerge in society are conditioned to a produce are reviewed by someone or receive some kind language of listeners. In the hearing impaired these of contribution (Tammaro and Mosier, 1997). The symbols lose their meaning and sign language will collaborative writing of documents allows participants to always be the most prevalent. interact during the construction of texts, generating new This difficulty of interaction may also be reflected in ideas and modifying them still of development work collaborative writing, since the hearing perception is (Howard, 2000). Thus, participants always have the correlated with the acquisition of written language, due to possibility to suffer interference in textual exposition of the relationship of sounds to the graphic symbols that his ideas, creating a new text composed by several characterize the natural language. Thus, the formal participants. This context of interaction among writing produced by deaf people is based on a different participants in a cooperative process of editing promotes way of thinking and basically sign languages. acceptance of differences that exist between individuals As Gotti (1991) affirms, the phrase structure of the and could be further explored when we think of hearing impaired is disjointed, without connecting interaction between listeners and deaf people. elements, often without verbs, due the deficiency in logic. 53 CEUR Proceedings 4th Workshop HCP Human Centered Processes, February 10-11, 2011 Besides promoting greater interaction among co-  Be flexible to meet the usability needs of users; authors, collaborative editing environments can promote  Allow editing of synchronously and critical thinking, helping people to learn from each other asynchronously; and strengthen the social relationships of those who write  Maintaining the integrity of the document being together (Mailhiot, 1968). Such benefits could also be edited by different users and the possibility of merging targeted to facilitate interaction between deaf and to combine the contributions; hearing. Thereafter, the editing process could become a  Have an access policy that defines roles and cooperative way for the development of a sense of their permissions and restrictions on the handling of cooperation and acceptance of hearing impaired by documents; listeners.  Multiple versions of a document should be However, it is necessary not only thinking on the maintained so that someone can come back with a benefits or problems that this approach represents, but version where appropriate. It is also important that the also about the changes in the perception of reality and the record which was the collaboration of each co-author; changes that occur even in the way of writing. If writing  It is important to offer options for comment together with individuals who use the same grammatical where the user can make their comments to a document structure of language can become a complex process, or specific parts of it; with individuals who use different grammatical structures  It is also important to allow communication the level of complexity may increase further. between the co-authors, so that they can discuss and In contrast, once aroused the senses to the value of exchange ideas; cooperation or interaction and understanding its validity,  Allow the creation of a workflow for the it will never be forgotten by an individual. Thus, the construction of the document and publication of the benefits of this interaction could overcome the difficulties same co-authors; presented. These characteristics can become great allies in this  When a document is created and shared, users process of interaction through collaborative writing. who have access to it should be notified; According to Ellis, Gibbs and Rein (1991), until they  Similarly, when a document is changed, all users have established interpersonal relationships based on that share should be alerted; and acceptance, interdependence and complementarity, the  Provide monitoring a document allowing, for groups are not ready to develop a cooperative work. example, who is now visiting, who never accessed etc. With the aim of using a tool that would meet the largest possible number of the above characteristics, was The Experiment chosen editor GoogleDocs to be used in the Aiming to examine the contribution that collaborative experiment. It needs only a registration email and is a writing can offer to improve the interaction between deaf system for easy access. and hearing people, was conducted an experiment that Also, lets you invite others to join the work, being a involved the production of a text in a cooperative manner tool of collective works, which also offers basic editing between these two types of co-authors. tasks with a desktop simple and easy to understand, also The experiment was conducted in the computer lab of allows these operations can be performed in conjunction the School Professor Olga Teixeira de Oliveira, pole of with other participants in real time, and, provides a inclusion of students with hearing impairment located in synchronous or asynchronous editing. Duque de Caxias in Rio de Janeiro. According to Machado (2009), this tool fosters The moderator of this experiment is a school teacher, interaction, exchange of ideas and collective production who initially explained to the participants the process of of texts. The exchanges can be established positively collaborative writing. On this part of the experiment, the enabling creativity, critical thinking, responsibility and moderator writes: "They had the opportunity to better collaboration. understand the reality of two worlds (hearing world and Google Docs provides ease of use, storage and online deaf world). Students listeners were impressed with the editing of files, access via the browser on multiple writing of deaf students, then had to explain about this platforms, gratuity, requires no software installation and condition of the deaf colleagues. In short, I explained that simple interface and be accessible over the web Libras (Brazilian Sign Language) is the first language of (Machado, 2009). the deaf person and written Portuguese is a second language, and how they think in Libras have difficulty in Development organizing writing with the grammatical structure of For the development of the experimental parameters were Portuguese. But that does not make them worse than the considered, as described below: listeners, but different." LM.  The chosen theme for the activity; The Tool Used in the Experiment  The age group of invited participants: 13-18 years old; According to Tammaro et al. (1997), a cooperative editor  The theme of the text to be produced: "A whole should provide mechanisms to assist in the interaction country in the World Cup." The choice of this subject that occurs when people are working collaboratively on consider the proximity of the 2010 World Cup and also editing documents. Thus, their characteristics should the age group of participants. The theme is easy to include: 54 CEUR Proceedings 4th Workshop HCP Human Centered Processes, February 10-11, 2011 understand and refers to a subject widely reported and experiment contributed to the group interaction during discussed in the media, serving as a motivating factor the editing cooperative process. for the interaction of participants; It was also noted that the difficulty that hearing  The number of participants: ten co-authors, five impaired present to organize the writing, using the and five deaf listeners; Portuguese grammatical structure, can be unknown even  All deaf participants are congenital deafness, by listeners of the same social group, as is noted in the and they were born with hearing loss were illiterate and following testimony of a co- authors: "I didn’t know that without the reference of phrasal constructions and deaf people write so differently." MVS (Listener). In this sounds of their own natural language; aspect, the experiment allowed the participants co-  The participants had a period of seven days to authors could learn about the different ways to use their build the text in a collaborative way. mother tongue. Following the construction of the text in Participants of the experiment lso report that has never GoogleDocs, we observed that the interaction occurred participated in a collaborative writing process. However, both synchronously, whereas some young people interact all claim that the process of writing together facilitated within their school environment in the same place and at the construction of the text. Regardless of the group is the same time, as asynchronous distributed, because formed by people with different phrasal constructions, other interactions were carried out at different times and they note that the collective knowledge that allowed places. everyone to have gain knowledge on the topic: "They Regarding to the contributions of the co-authors, was spent more info for those who had little knowledge of the noted that participants complemented and not changed subject." JHM (Listener). "Knowing the subject matter the text of the other participants, i.e., took care not to and passing colleagues." TF (Deaf). These reports modify the text of another. On that point, the moderator demonstrate that the differences in the construction of reports: "Initially I was a little worried about the way that phrases and expressions did not affect the group listener students understand the writing of deaf interaction. colleagues. But, after the explanation, I noted the positive Most deaf people said that interaction with the listeners reaction of the group. Demonstrated a willingness to help was good and all the listeners said that interaction with and decided not to correct spelling and concordance of the hearing impaired was excellent, as shown in Figure texts developed by deaf students. And on the other hand, 01. This indicates a great level of acceptance and the deaf were more attentive to the listener colleagues’ understanding of the listeners with respect to the writing, and sometimes tried to correct himself." LM. difficulties in writing of the hearing impaired, as reported The participants answered a questionnaire consisting of by the participants: "To know a little deaf." LR eight questions, which together with the historical (Listener). "Listeners and deaf good relationship." SGO contribution of the participants contributed to the tool (Deaf). used to analyze the following measures: It was observed that the collaborative writing process  The level of knowledge of participants on the not only facilitated the group interaction in this activity, theme chosen for the preparation of the text; but also promoted greater acceptance of hearing impaired  The degree of difficulty in using the tool; and contributed to the growth of the social bond, as reported by the participants: "Learn to write better  The level of interaction between participants in listener colleague." TF (Deaf). "Because I met so my deaf the collaborative writing process; friends." SK (Listener). "As one completes the other."  The level of interaction between listeners and DAO (Deaf). hearing impaired. Analysis of Results Conclusions The experiment has achieved the goal of simulating a real Data collected through the questionnaire, as well as the situation of interaction between listeners and the hearing history contributions of participants in the cooperative impaired. According to the moderator, "this experiment editor used, were analyzed in a qualitative way. Thus, it has enabled work on the theme World Cup, writing, was possible to consider whether the collaborative creativity, respect and appreciation of their own writing process developed by the group contributed to productions and those of their colleagues." This report improve the interaction among hearing impaired and confirms that it is very important that the effects of oral Listeners who participated in the experiment. language on cognition are not overvalued by listeners As shown in Figure 1, the majority of participants, both about the performance of the hearing impaired, which listeners as hearing impaired, has at least some would complicate its inclusion and real chances of a knowledge on the topic "A whole country in the World productive interaction. However, the experiment proved Cup", chosen for the construction of the text. This that through writing cooperative deaf participants were indicates that the level of knowledge of participants on able to interact with listeners and together build a textual the topic facilitated the group interaction in this product, despite their differences in the use of the experiment. grammatical structure of Portuguese Language. Figure 1 also shows that most listeners had no Regarding the phrasal construction, was observed in difficulty in using the tool and the majority of hearing the experiment that participants did not change the impaired had little or no difficulty. It was possible to note sentences presented differently. This confirms that that facility presented in using the chosen tool for this 55 CEUR Proceedings 4th Workshop HCP Human Centered Processes, February 10-11, 2011 although there is significant difference in the level of “Desenvolvimento psicológico e educação” (pp.200- management of instrumental language, the process of 216), 1996. communication between participants was not harmed. Capovilla, F. C., Gonçalves, M.J. and Macedo, E. C. This validates the collaborative writing as a mechanism (1998). Tecnologia em (Re)Habilitação Cognitiva: of interaction between deaf and hearing, and shows that uma perspectiva multidisciplinar. São Paulo, Brasil. this mechanism favored a greater acceptance of Ciccone, M. (1996), “Total Communication” 2nd ed., Rio differences among individuals and helped to improve the de Janeiro, 1996 (In Portuguese). cognitive development of participants. On that point, the Couto-Lenzi, A. (1997) “A integração das pessoas moderator noted: "The result achieved was excellent, and surdas.” Informativo técnico-científico do INES, Rio de Janeiro, v.7, n.7, p.22-25, jun.1997. I know that through this tool GoogleDocs students can Ellis, C.A., Gibbs, S. J., Rein, G. (1991) Groupware: further develop their written productions. I consider this some issues and experiences. In: Communications of tool as another way in the pursuit of cognitive the ACM, 34, 39–58. development of my students, and enjoyed both working Gatto, C. I., Tochetto, T. M. (2007). Infantile hearing with her, I'm thinking of developing a job with a new loss: implications and solutions. Rev CEFAC, São group, involving all students." LM. This report shows Paulo – Brasil. that through this experiment it was possible to extend the Howard, R.M. (2000). “Collaborative Pedagogy”, In: possibilities of interaction between deaf and hearing Collaborative Pedagogies: A Bibliographic Guide, Ed. through collaborative writing. Tate, G., Ruppier, A. and Schick, K., Oxford The reports presented in this paper guides analyze of University Press. results and confirm the acceptance of the collaborative Machado A. C. T. (2009). The Tool Google Docs: work proposed by the experiment. They clearly show that Construction of Knowledge Through Interaction and the experiment helped to improve the interaction between Collaboration. Scientific Journal of Distance deaf and listener not only in the construction of the text, Education. but in building a more harmonious and real coexistence. Mailhiot, G.B. (1968) Dynamique et genèse des groupes, actualité des découvertes de Kurt Lewin, Paris, France, Éditions de l'Épi. 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