Promoting equity, equal opportunities to all and social inclusion of people with disabilities is a concern of modern societies at large and a key topic in the agenda of European Higher Education. Despite all the progress, we cannot ignore the fact that the conditions provided by the society for the deaf are still far from being perfect. The communication with deaf by means of written text is not as efficient as it might seem at first. In fact, there is a very deep gap between sign language and spoken/written language. The vocabulary, the sentence construction and the grammatical rules are quite different among these two worlds. These facts bring significant difficulties in reading and understanding the meaning of text for deaf people and, on the other hand, make it quite difficult for people with no hearing disabilities to understand sign language. The deployment of tools to assist the daily communication, in schools, in public services, in museums and other, between deaf people and the rest may be a significant contribution to the social inclusion of the deaf community. The work described in this paper addresses the development of a bidirectional translator between Portuguese Sign Language and Portuguese text. The translator from sign language to text resorts to two devices, namely the Microsoft Kinect and 5DT Sensor Gloves in order to gather data about the motion and shape of the hands. The hands configurations are classified using Support Vector Machines. The classification of the movement and orientation of the hands are achieved through the use of Dynamic Time Warping algorithm. The translator exhibits a precision higher than 90%. In the other direction, the translation of Portuguese text to Portuguese Sign Language is supported by a 3D avatar which interprets the entered text and performs the corresponding animations.

Deaf and blind students face communication barrierst that are constantly present in their daily lives. These barriers arise naturally since the deaf community, the blind community and the rest of the students and teachers use different languages and different channels to communicate. These barriers have a significant impact in the academic, personal and professional development of deaf and blind students. Using automatic tools to assist the fluid communication between people using different languages and different channels of communication might significantly promote the social inclusion of disabled students. In this paper we describe the ACE architecture which incorporates VirtualSign, a translator for sign language and other components to allow for the real time translation between sign and oral languages. This architecture supports any sign language. We expect ACE will provide ways for the fluid communication among deaf people, blind people and those not constrained by these disabilities.

In this paper we present the overall evaluation of the Quantitative Evaluation Framework (QEF) approach which has been applied in an operational teaching environment for the last year. This environment includes the development of a serious game, supported by a web platform and extended to mobile platforms, which is being supervised by the research group GILT (Graphics, interaction & learning technologies) under the frame of an international project. The serious game that has been developed is called "Time Mesh". Time Mesh is a funded quasi experimental educational software project which is being developed under the frame of a quality evaluation environment, Quantitative Evaluation Framework (QEF) (Escudeiro Paula and Bidarra José, 2006), that measures system quality throughout its development life cycle. The quality evaluation process started with a careful planning phase. It has included the purpose of the evaluation, the timing of the evaluation and who should be conducting the evaluation process. Moderating the development of "Time Mesh" with QEF assures the quality of the final product.

The present work was developed in an educational context and was introduced into the theme of the practical application in a classroom setting of the subject Tecnologias da Informação e Comunicação - TIC (Information and Communication Technologies - ICT) with 5th and 6th grade students. All the work presented here was based on two premises: the use of Scratch as a tool and the students as producers of media, which in turn developed their creativity, problem solving skills, and augmented their media literacy and critical thinking aptitude. In this plan of action, we considered three phases: in the 1st phase we evaluated several methodologies for introducing Scratch; in the 2nd phase we focused on collaborative learning in small groups; in the 3rd phase the focus was on developing a game with the whole class. For the duration of this study, it was noticeable that the group of students easily adapted to Scratch. We concluded that the use of this tool motivates students and improves the learning process. It also contributes to a higher level of concentration and promotes collaborative learning. Additionally, it facilitates creativity, dialogue and the overall relationship among students. The teacher quickly understood that this tool allowed the shift into a pedagogic model based on the collaborative construction of knowledge. At the end of this paper there are suggestions of strategies that can be adopted in order to work with Scratch in the classroom. Furthermore, we offer recommendations for possible future projects in this area.

Societies are experiencing changes in work organization, in part due to the growing ease with which people can collaborate. People with common interests are interacting within heterogeneous teams composed of members from different cultural groups and with distinct skills and backgrounds. Modern economies require professionals to excel in collaboration and communication skills in an international setting. However, these competences are not usually addressed in curricula. In the diverse environment of the current labour markets, it is essential to promote teamwork and communication skills at an international level. In the Multinational Undergraduate Teamwork course, students develop a major project as members of an international team while working at their home institutions. Team members are geographically spread to ensure that the teams are heterogeneous and to promote international cooperation. It is argued that this paradigm can be applied to any project or internship course unit. The results from the pilot programmes support the authors' initial hypothesis that this innovative paradigm significantly promotes the development of soft skills in students.

In this paper authors present the overall study that includes the model developed (VS Model) and the experiences performed, with an automatic bidirectional sign language translator, between written and sign language, which is being supervised by the research group GILT (Graphics, interaction & learning technologies) under the frame of a national project called Virtual Sign (VS project). This project aims to develop and evaluate a model that facilitates access for the deaf and hearing impaired to digital content - in particular the educational content and learning objects - creating the conditions for greater social inclusion of deaf and hearing impaired people. Access to digital content will be supported by an automatic translator between Portuguese Writing (LEP) and Portuguese Sign Language (LGP) supported by an interaction model.FCT - Projeto VirtualSign - Ref. PTDC/CPE-CED/121878/201