The reason for the project:For deaf people to participate in society, they must be able to read. For deaf people toparticipate in a global society, they must be able to read English. Unfortunately, themajority of deaf adults are illiterate or semi-literate. This is a well-known and wellresearchedproblem, across the world.Profoundly deaf people in every country struggle to achieve competence in the basicand essential skills of reading and writing. This has a negative impact on opportunitiesfor learning, employment, social and cultural activities and integration in digital culture. Itmeans that deaf people are the most excluded of all communities because of alanguage issue, not a disability issue. Deaf people have sign language for a sociallanguage but need competence in a formal written language in order to join society. Acompetence in written English gives entry to the widest avenues of knowledge andintegration as 97% of all internet material is in English. Most effort has been focusedon sign language and interpreting. Where deaf people have been taught writtenlanguage, they are usually only those from prosperous backgrounds. This project aimsto give all Deaf adults an opportunity to begin the journey to gain competence in aninternationally useful written language.This project will:• Devise a methodology for teaching basic skills in written English without reference tophonetics, and taking into account the different cognitive processes of deaf people andusing the national sign language of the learners as the language of instruction• Prepare online materials in multimedia format for teaching, interactive learning andtesting of outcomes• Prepare a mentor / teacher pack for experienced teachers with local sign languageskills• Train a pilot group of teachers in the three countries• Teach approximately 90 deaf learners written English in a pilot running of the course• Test and demonstrate the value added achievement in levels of competence againstnational benchmarks (Level 1 in Adult Education in UK)The impact will be:• A tried and tested course and methodology, together with support material and networkwill become available to give every profoundly deaf person the opportunity to acquirebasic reading and writing competence.• Providing deaf people with a better chance of employment, self development andinclusion• The course will also be of use for migrant and other communities who struggle withspoken language and to any country which has a high incidence of profound deafness.