Prelingual bilingual deaf: Multimedia content perception of a Brazilian health campaign

• Published in: First Monday Vol. 22; no. 7
• Main Authors: Cavalcante, Ney Wagner Freitas, Leal Ferreira, Simone Bacellar, Tavares, Elaine, Capra, Eliane Pinheiro, Alves, Aline da Silva
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chicago University of Illinois at Chicago Library 03.07.2017
• Subjects: Access to information; Bilingualism; Case studies; Deafness; Multimedia; Public health; Brazil
• ISSN: 1396-0466; 1396-0466
• DOI: 10.5210/fm.v22i7.7881

Prelingual bilingual deaf individuals have, most of the time, difficulties comprehending textual information available on the Internet due to their linguistic specificities. Although this public has their right to access health information guaranteed by law, the majority of health campaigns available on the Web are inadequate for the hearing impaired.The objective of this study was to verify the main barriers pointed out by prelingual deaf users during their interaction with multimedia content of a public health campaign, aspects that may hinder the comprehension, with the intent of providing a series of recommendations that may guide developers when designing online health campaigns. In order to achieve so, a case study with two units of analysis was conducted: one consisted of tests with five deaf people and the other was comprised of five normal hearing listeners with an educational profile and computer skills similar to the deaf group.The research was conducted in eight steps: (i) ethnographic study; (ii) participants profiling and selection; (iii) selection of health campaigns to be examined; (iv) tasks definition; (v) pre and post-testing interviews; (vi) testing; (vii) data analysis; and, (viii) recommendation list development.As a result of this study subject area, it became possible to notice that several campaigns presented informational polysemy in their verbal and visual content, i.e., the images presented in the folders may carry multiple and diverse meanings for users (Freitas, et al., 2014).