Community-based co-design for accessible health information for Deaf people in a context with societal complexity

Deaf people, who mainly use a signed language for communication, encounter multiple information accessibility challenges in their daily lives. Vital information, like health, has been limitedly accessible to Deaf people across the globe, including those in the Western Cape, South Africa—the studied context of this thesis. The lack of access to accurate health information causes some Deaf people to neglect medicine and treatment adherence.Design for Sustainabilit

A mobile survey for collecting data from deaf people who use sign language for communication

Hearing researchers and practitioners might have encountered challenges in collecting data from Deaf people who mainly rely on sign language for communication. This could be due to language barriers and the non-user-friendly interface of paper and text-based questionnaires. In an attempt to overcome such challenges, this paper proposes a solution using a mobile questionnaire that operates on smartphones useable by relevant researchers and practitioners to utilize for data collections in Deaf communities. This mobile survey was a result of a design participatory method that involved a multidisciplinary team in Design, Development, Testing, and Deployment stages. This paper provides a brief description of the high-level view of the first three stages. The paper further elaborates on the Deployment stage to address the use of this mobile survey when collecting data from Deaf communities in Western Cape, South Africa

Mobile communication tools for a South African deaf patient in a pharmacy context

This paper presents a case of iterative community-based co-design to facilitate the emergence of an innovative mobile system to address a potentially life-threatening scenario for Deaf people in South Africa. For Deaf people who communicate in South African Sign Language, miscommunication due to language barriers, under-education and under-employment can lead to a potentially dangerous therapeutic outcome when Deaf people misunderstand a pharmacist's instructions on how to take prescribed medicine. The design for a mobile communication aid to address this problem emerged from iterative cycles of action research performed with a local Deaf community that also involved pharmacists and a multi-disciplinary research team. Conventional user-centred design techniques were innovatively appropriated for the community-based co-design. The paper illustrates the community-based co-design process and points the way toward imminent implementation, as well as the potential application of the mobile solution to other scenarios in Deaf people's lives.Design EngineeringIndustrial Design Engineerin

Beyond Traditional Ethics when Developing Assistive Technology for and with Deaf People in Developing Regions

There are limitations to traditional ethical approaches and procedures when engaged in assistive technology (AT) research for Deaf people in a developing region. Non-traditional issues arise as a consequence of employing action research, including but not limited to how informed consent is construed and obtained; empowerment of participants to become involved in co-design; awareness of unfamiliar cultural issues of participants (as opposed to subjects); and accommodating community-centred, as opposed to person-centred, nuances. This chapter describes AT research with an entity called Deaf Community of Cape Town (DCCT), a disabled people’s organisation (DPO) that works on behalf of a marginalised community of under-educated, under-employed and semi-literate Deaf people across metropolitan Cape Town. We describe how non-traditional ethical concerns arose in our experience. We reflect on how these ethical issues affect AT design, based on long-term engagement; and summarise the themes, what we have learned and how we modified our practise, and finally, offer suggestions to others working on AT in developing regions.Telkom, Cisco, Aria Technologies, THRIP, NRF, SANPADWeb of Scienc