Signing Language Education Project

<-back

The American Sign Language Browser is a popular online resource containing quick access to digital video of ASL signs.
The ASL Browser

OVERVIEW

The American Sign Language (ASL) Browser collects the 3000 different signs representing 5000 English words that are included on the Personal Communicator CD-ROM and presents them in a web site where you can look up the video of the signs and learn interesting things about them.

This site has become extremely popular, generating several million hits per year. It is often the first site found in search engines related to sign language and is promoted on several hundred sign language resource sites as the best, free, online sign language dictionary.

CREATIVE MERIT

Awards:

  • ASL Browser licensed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency for use on their internal network. 2002.
  • Positive online review in SMORK: "Safe Marvelous Online Resources for Kids" 2002.
  • "An outstanding site in its subject area." Web Feet Seal of Approval, Summer, 2002
  • Selected by MERLOT , a Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching, as a distinguished, high-quality source of learning material. November 20, 2000 and June, 2002.
  • Featured on Spanish and World Languages/Cultures website, March 2001.
  • Four stars on "Surfing the Net with Kids” national column, March 2001.
  • Site of the Day at TechLearning.com’s Site of the Day, September 2001.
  • Rated "Wonderful!" and awarded 4 stars in the 3/21/2001 syndicated newspaper column " Surfing the Net with Kids ."
  • Appears in MaMaMedia : A Kid's Guide to the Net Magazine (Volume 4, Issue 1, 2001).
  • Selected as TechWeb TechLearning Site of the Day on 9/10/2001.
  • "Blue Web'n" award from Pacific Bell Blue Web'n , a library of blue ribbon learning sites. October 26, 1998.

Audience Reach:

  • The web site has generated more than 20 million hits a year since 2001 (the first year we started collecting web stats on the site.)

ROLE

To construct the web site, I created a program that auto generates the pages given the same database of information used by the Personal CD-ROM. Kyle Tait and myself designed the site.

FUNDING

  • Funded internally by the Communication Technology Lab. However, much of the content was generated through funding of the Personal Communicator CD-ROM from the US Department of Education.

VIEW THE WORK

The ASL Browser Web Site is available online.