Deaf Community Integration: Sociotechnical Systems

Deaf people must constantly face a society that builds or reinforces barriers that make communication difficult. As a result, an initiative emerged in Inclutec, an interest center at the Technological Institute of Costa Rica (TEC), and a support product was developed that seeks to lend a bridge among Spanish and Costa Rican Sign Language (LESCO). The 'LESCO Translator' project has been designed to facilitate translation in both ways, Spanish - LESCO, and LESCO - Spanish, languages that have different grammar and therefore the achievement of an automatic translation is further complicated. As the first stage of this project, a sign editor and a speech editor were created. The former one is used to create vocabulary and the latter one to form speeches that use this vocabulary, in order to have informational text translations. This article evidences, as a product of internal research of ethnomethodological design, the flow of experience of this process from a sociotechnical systems perspective, having conceived and validated each of the stages of the project with users of the product, in this case, representatives of the deaf community of Costa Rica. It also exposes the validation of some formal aspects, through the application of a test.