People with hearing disabilities face not only the challenge of social isolation, but also limited academic and professional opportunities due to communication barriers.
As an organization that values inclusion and innovation, CGI is collaborating with Schule am Sommerhoffpark (SamS) on three projects that provide deaf and hard-of-hearing children with both learning and communication tools, as well as social participation opportunities.
SamS is a school in Frankfurt, Germany, that caters to students with hearing challenges. As a cross-regional counseling and support center, it helps children and their families by teaching everyday problem-solving strategies.
Inspiring students to learn IT through robotics
In July 2022, we formed a robotics team with SamS to help students learn programming in a playful way by building robots.
The robotics course covers basic robotic programming for microcontrollers, which are needed to develop controlled robots. It aims to enable young learners to recognize their IT talents at an early stage.
In 2023, the team successfully coached 10 SamS students from grades 7 to 10. The project will continue in 2024 with a different approach, as CGI focuses on training students for the World Robot Olympiad (WRO).
Developing a sign language tool
About 70 million people globally use sign language as their primary method of communication. Through our collaboration with SamS on another project, our consultants and professionals are developing a sign language tool that translates spoken language into sign language in real time and visualizes it through an avatar.
This project, with the guidance of SamS teachers and students, aims to bridge the gap between hearing people and people with hearing disabilities by facilitating communication through artificial intelligence. The tool, which is currently in production, will support English, German, and Ukrainian languages.
Donating refurbished laptops
In a third project, we refurbished 50 CGI laptops and donated these to SamS students in 2023 to help them improve their IT skills at school and at home.
Through these projects, CGI and SamS hope to encourage and support children with hearing challenges in realizing their full potential through new opportunities for collaboration, learning, and growth.
