It was a great honour to host the Croatian Association of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, which has presented the final activities of the Nature for All in Sign Language project on the 15th of May. The leader of the project, which was granted funding by the Ministry of Tourism and Sports, selected all Croatian national parks as associated partners. Members of the Karlovac County Association of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing also participated in the final conference because there is currently no association for people with this type of disability in the Lika-Senj County.
The project mainly aimed to create content in the form of videos recorded by the Croatian Association of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, with all the special features of the protected areas interpreted into Croatian Sign Language and International Sign. This task was not easy due to the complexity of some concepts, which the translators tried to simplify while retaining the facts and meaning. Also, the project was done in collaboration with the Association of Employers in Croatian Hospitality, with workshops being held for tourism workers during the project.
The final conference gave us the opportunity to learn more about how we can communicate with the deaf and hard of hearing (no yelling!), how challenging lip reading is (the deaf and hard of hearing understand only about 30% of the content), as well as trying to understand sign language and certain phrases.
In the coming period, stickers with a QR code will be placed at the main entrances to Plitvice Lakes National Park and other locations, giving the deaf and hard of hearing access to videos with content about the national park, i.e. tour programs and natural features. 32 videos are available in Croatian Sign Language and 17 in International Sign, with subtitles for every video.
