Urgent funding to develop “PHD Library” for Deaf children and people

Over 5% of the world’s population – 360 million people – has disabling hearing loss (328 million adults and 32 million children).

Globally for children who are deaf, hard of hearing and deafblind (PHD = People with Hearing Difficulty), access to and education in a local sign language is often limited or absent. Without access to whole language with frequent and daily input to an accessible and natural language, the foundations of literacy, children are prevented from reaching their full potential. In developing countries and low-resource contexts, literacy outcomes for children who are Deaf are particularly substandard.

Besides most of the times deaf people are unable to successfully communicate with ordinary people including their family and friends because there is no easy way for ordinary people to learn sign language or get access to a properly organized sign language dictionary to decipher the messages conveyed by signs.

To ensure the deaf population especially the children can get access to whole of their local sign language to get decent education from their early childhood and Non PHDs can communicate with them properly – I have decided to create an interactive Web Application named – “PHD Library”.

It will be the first of its kind. As it will continuously collect, store and provide animated sign videos to understand and learn sign language most easily; at the same time, it will work as the sign language learning portal for both children and adults; it will work on limited or no internet accessible areas (i.e. – underdeveloped and developing countries); And it will provide service to people of all the countries of the world – no matter what their language is or which variation of sign language they use and it will be totally free!

PHD Library will be visible as an interactive web application with the following segments –

1. Nursery: It will be the children learning area with interactive materials such as systematic animated sign lessons, visual rhymes, stories, word games etc.

2. Cubicle: Adult learning area Containing structured sign lessons, animated sign dictionary, advance rapid learning materials etc. for PHDs and ordinary people of all ages.

3. Dictionary: Categorized animated sign collection - Containing International and Country wise signs with animated character and word references for easy understanding by all.

4. Contributor: Systematic input area for new signs - Containing features and facilities for PHDs and ordinary people to add and verify words and signs in regional context to enrich local sign language dictionary.

5. Offline: Containing offline, low resource consuming version of the Nursery, Cubicle and Dictionary to download and install in Computers or mobile devices.

6. Media: Containing specially subtitled age wise movies, documentaries etc. for PHDs and Ordinary people which will ease up the learning process of sign languages and make it fun for everyone!

Timeline:

Phase – 01: 4 months to Developing a beta version of PHD Library and releasing it for PHD community of the world – to create the essential contents of the animated sign dictionary.

Phase – 02: 2.5 months to Finalizing the features of PHD Library, appointing sign language experts from different countries to check the contributed local signs and releasing Version -1.0 of PHD Library for both PHDs and Ordinary people, start campaign to make people aware of its usefulness.

Phase – 03: 2 to 2.5 months to Release PHD Library as an open source platform for all to enrich its contents and to ensure PHD Library evolves positively for all time for all.

Cost Estimation:

Phase – 01: Total amount of USD 58,000.00

Breakdown of project cost:

1. Salary:

Lead software developer (No. of professional – 01) – $2,800 X 1 X 4 months = $11,200

Software engineer (No. of professional – 02) - $1,800 X 2 X 4 months = $14,400

System engineer (No. of professional – 01) - $2,000 X 1 X 4 months = $8,000

Graphic designer and UI artist (No. of professional – 01) – $1,500 X 1 X 4 months = $6,000

2. Others:

A. Office space rent and utility bills - $800 X 4 = $3,200

B. Compact office furniture – $2,000

C. Hardware:

1. Laptops for Software developer, engineers and system engineer – 4 nos. X $1,524= $6,096
2. Heavy duty PC for graphics designer and UI Artist – 1 nos. X $2,550= $2,550
3. Motion capture sensors and gloves to create the base – 2 sets X $1,200 =$2,400

3D models with interactive animation

D. Miscellaneous - $2,154

I eagerly want to make it happen – which will help all the PHDs of the world. Without your help – we cannot complete phase – 01.

I am confident after we finish Phase – 01, we can approach different communities and organizations with a working version of the web application. (Currently I have approached some – but all has refused or kept the matter to a pending state as I cannot provide them any working version). They can easily understand it’s functionality and importance then and fund us for the other 02 phases. And when we will successfully finish the whole 3 phases – we will publish it as an open source web application – so people willing to take part in development or enriching the local sign language dictionary will keep it alive for the greater good of the deaf communities all over the world.

So dear friends – please help us as much as you can by donating for this great cause. With your financial aid – we will do our best to develop PHD Library as fast as we can.