Evaluation of an English Word Look-Up Tool for Web-Browsing with Sign Language Video for Deaf Readers

Research has shown that some people who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing (DHH) in the U.S. have lower levels of English language literacy than their hearing peers, which creates a barrier to access web content for these users. We have designed an interface to assist these users in reading English text on web pages; users can click on certain marked words to view an ASL sign video in a pop-up. A user study was conducted to evaluate this tool and compare it with web pages containing only text, as well as pages where users can click on words and see text-definitions using the Google Dictionary plug-in for browsers. The study assessed participants’ subjective preference for these conditions and compared their performance in completing reading comprehension tasks with each of these tools. We found that participants preferred having support tools in their interface as opposed to none, but we did not measure a significant difference in their preferences between the two support tools provided. This paper presents the details of design and development of this proposed tool, design guidelines applied to the prototype, factors influencing the results, and directions for future work.