Press
26.1.24
How Signing Characters Help Deaf Children Learn Language
12.30.23
03.19.23
“Designing Access in Sound Art Exhibitions: Centering Deaf Experiences in Musical Thinking”
Paper about how to make music exhibitions accessible for Deaf people written by Lloyd May, Sarah Miller, Sehuam Bakri, Lorna Quandt, and Melissa Malzkuhn. This paper was written after collaboration with the Smithsonian American Art Museum Musical Thinking exhibit in which Motion Light Lab provided guidance as Deaf accessibility experts.
ACM DL / Read Full Article
10.12.22
9.22.22
08.16.22
“Perceiving fingerspelling via point-light displays: The stimulus and perceiver both matter”
Motion Light Lab collaborated with Action Brain Lab on a research study to better understand perceiving fingerspelling in difficult visual environments. Motion Light Lab created point light display videos of a signer fingerspelling both real and made up city names. This was conducted online with 238 participants, both Deaf and hearing.
02.10.22
08.31.20
09.28.18
“A digital Sign Languages Library for Every Deaf Child”
A new project in the making, SignShare, is a positive step in the direction to create a digital library for every deaf child around the world by involving and empowering their deaf communities. In this direction, providing solutions to the dearth of sign language resources available to deaf children, particularly in developing countries, will inspire more people to create solutions that expand access to sign languages around the globe.
09.27.18
“A Bilingual App with Sign Language brings more stories to Deaf Children”
“And building literacy skills is only the beginning.”
02.23.18
Innovation Practice 2018
VL2 Storybook Creator receives international recognition from Zero Project Conference, taking place at United Nations in Vienna on #accessibility.
05.17.17
Feature on the Daily Moth
The Daily Moth did a feature on the labs of VL2, including Motion Light Lab!
06.20.16
Susan Layton: “i *heart* ASL stories! (apps)”
"You will find their use of classifiers, facial expressions, use of space and many other ASL components are amazing to watch and would be useful in mirroring and expounding on in your own practice. Not only that, the ‘Watch’ section of the apps give you a beautiful opportunity to practice voicing."
05.11.16
“Avatars, Sign-Along Story Apps May Support Literacy for Deaf Students”
Remember the famous 30 million word gap in language exposure between the children of professional families and those on welfare, and all its attendant problems in reading and attention? How could educators make up for the gap for a child with no exposure to language at all in the first year or two of life?
8.24.15
The Verge: “Accessibility Tech in a Hearing-Centric World”
2015
“Bilingual Storybook Apps: An Interactive Reading Experience for Children”
In recent years, researchers have turned their attention to the cognitive impact of bilingualism, and the benefits of using two languages have become increasingly apparent. Children raised in bilingual families exhibit stronger awareness of the style and tone of language, stronger cognitive development, and higher levels of reading skill than children raised in families where only one language is used.
06.28.15
"When It Comes To Learning For The Deaf, ‘It's A 3-D Language’"
In a small, sparse makeshift lab, Melissa Malzkuhn practices her range of motion in a black, full-body unitard dotted with light-reflecting nodes. She's strapped on a motion capture, or mocap, suit. Infrared cameras that line the room will capture her movement and translate it into a 3-D character, or avatar, on a computer...
05.01.15
“How the Motion Light Lab at Gallaudet is making Bilingual Books for Deaf children”
In 2009, the current director of the Motion Light Lab (ML2) at Gallaudet University, Melissa Malzkuhn, painted a small, unused room in Chroma Key paint and put up a sign that said, “Motion Lab.”
“It was like putting up my sign on a treehouse and calling it a pirate ship,” she said.
06.14
“VL2-Storybook Apps”
Great stories encourage children to reading and learning. The inspiration behind the VL2 Storybook Apps comes from the belief that there are many ways to tell a great story.
04.11.14
“Vl2 Storybook Apps for iPad”
"...The Baobab, which has approximately 1,500 downloads as of now. Also, The Baobab won second place in the DEVICE Design Award 2014—Professional Category this past February. Norway is working to translate The Baobab to create a different version of the app to suit deaf people in Norway who might not know ASL or English."
04.03.14
“Interactive Storybook iPad app especially for ASL deaf children”
Washington - Science of Learning Center on Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2) has released a bilingual storybook app for the iPad, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, mainly developed to help language acquisition and reading in children who are deaf and hard of hearing.
The National Science Foundation-funded Science of Learning Center on Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2) at Gallaudet University research center has released the second in a series of three bilingual storybook apps for the iPad, The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
03.24.14
“NEW VL2 Storybook Apps: The Boy Who Cried Wolf"
The classic Aesop’s fable about the boy who cried wolf is brought to life in a wholly new medium with vivid American Sign Language storytelling, adding cinematic elements to a timeless tale. Accompanied by detailed paintings that evoke times of yore, this storybook app for the iPad comes with over 140 vocabulary words, signed and fingerspelled. App design is based on proven research on bilingualism and visual learning from Visual Language and Visual Learning.
12.15.13
“Bilingual Storybook App Designed for Deaf Children Based on Research Principles”
Nearly 96% of the deaf children are born in a family whose parents are not deaf (Mitchell & Karchmer, 2002.) Language acquisition and development are of a concern among those deaf children whose parents do not sign at an early age. Early language exposure is crucial to children’s ability to become lifelong learners.
02.05.13
“VL2 Storybook Apps”
Why are we doing this? Every child loves, and deserves, a great story. Great stories invite children into our vast world, encouraging new ways to imagine and then leading them down the path to reading and learning. The inspiration behind the VL2 Storybook Apps comes from the belief that there are many ways to tell a great story.