Company
FileMaker Press Release
Deaf Children Learn To Read With Sign Language Database
SANTA CLARA, Ca., December 21– Deaf children and adults around the
world are learning to read and communicate better thanks to
SignBank – a FileMaker Pro database application that stores the
movements, hand shapes and facial expressions in a written form of
sign language known as SignWriting.
By correlating signs to written words, SignBank helps improve
literacy among deaf-born adults and children, who often have
difficulty learning to read a spoken language based on sounds they
have never heard. SignBank also helps the deaf understand
other sign languages.
“Imagine how hard it is for deaf people to learn the printed words
of a spoken language when they have never heard any of these
sounds,” said Valerie Sutton, creator and director of SignBank and
inventor of SignWriting. “The database lets them search on words or
signs. For many, this is the first time they have looked up a word
in a dictionary, and the quick connection they make to written
expression is inspirational.”
A Key to Literacy Among the Deaf
Illiteracy rates are high among the deaf. Teaching these students
to read is an ongoing challenge for educators. At a number of
schools in the United States and Europe SignBank provides a vital
link between sign language and written language.
“These children have to learn two languages – American Sign
Language, which is their native language, and English, which is
their written language,” said Dr. Cecilia Flood, SignWriting
Literacy Project director for Albuquerque Public Schools Pilot
Program, who has been using SignBank at the Hodgin school since
1999. “SignBank is the first exposure to a written form of
the native language, and the children love it. The competency they
instinctively feel to seeing and understanding a written form of
Sign Language transfers directly to seeing and understanding the
written form of English.”
Multilingual Sign Language Dictionary
In addition to improving literacy, the SignBank also translates
sign languages. Contrary to popular belief, sign languages
are not international. There are hundreds of sign languages in the
world that differ from culture to culture and country to country.
American Sign Language, for instance, is different from British
Sign Language, which is different from Irish Sign Language.
As the written form of sign language, SignWriting is being used by
thousands of deaf and hearing-impaired people in 27 countries to
improve deaf education.
SignWriting was originally invented in 1974 by Sutton, then a
professional ballet dancer, as a way to write dance movements. The
SignWriting alphabet is a way to write body movement much as the
Roman alphabet writes words in English, French or German. By
capturing the individual visual hand shapes, movement arrows and
facial expressions that make up in the SignBank FileMaker Pro
database, SignWriting is now searchable and interactive for
students and researchers.
The SignBank database includes a dictionary of sign symbols that
can be sorted and printed, or viewed as picture dictionaries for
children, as well as multi-lingual databases for researchers,
complete with video clips and animation.
Originally, compiled as two standalone dictionaries in the 1980s,
Sutton and her team reprogrammed the dictionaries in FileMaker Pro
in order for the collection of symbols, signs, lessons, and manuals
to become completely searchable and interrelated. Also, with a
FileMaker Pro web access, the collection of 25,000 symbols that
comprise the SignBank is readily available to help researchers
around the word develop new software based on SignWriting.
SignBank is available as a free download
(http://www.signbank.org/signbank.html) for individual users PC or
Macintosh users worldwide. Other users, such as schools and
researchers, pay a modest fee to use the software.
About FileMaker, Inc.
FileMaker Pro (www.filemaker.com) is used by millions of
individuals and workgroups around the world to be more productive
and efficient. Business, education and government customers rely on
FileMaker to manage people, projects, images, assets and other
information. In addition to being the number one-selling
easy-to-use database software, the award-winning FileMaker product
line also includes low-cost Applications that automate basic
business tasks, ready-to-use Starter Solutions, and tools to create
and share solutions from the desktop to the web. FileMaker, Inc. is
a subsidiary of Apple Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL).
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Media contact:
Kevin Mallon
408-987-7227
kevin_mallon@filemaker.com
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