An assistive technology based on Peirce’s semiotics for the inclusive education of deaf and hearing children

In the contemporary educational scenario, heterogeneous classrooms have students with different communication needs. Whether we consider the inclusive education area, one of the most relevant drawbacks is that deaf children have needs that are normally ignored for not fitting with the pattern of other students. Furthermore, a few works have performed scientific researches that deeply investigate the application of models and technologies to tackle differences between deaf and hearing children. Therefore, this work proposes a bilingual literacy model based on Peirce’s semiotics for inclusive education that utilizes software technology to improve the communication process between deaf and hearing children in classrooms. An experiment was conducted to observe the level of communication during games played in class and to investigate the quality of interaction by considering the presence of the Portuguese and the Brazilian Signs Language. We also identified three communication categories between deaf and hearing children: (i) Sign Communication; (ii) Common Vocabulary; and (iii) Formal Signaled Communication. We developed and implemented a semiotic model that supports the learning of Portuguese and Libras alphabets, as well as the process of communication between deaf and hearing children.