Rise Ebooks: Leveraging Off-The-Shelf Software Components In Support Of Deaf Literacy

The RISE bimodal-bilingual eBooks project is a joint initiative of Gallaudet University and Swarthmore College in the United States aimed to promote shared reading activities between hearing adults and their deaf children, although the format may welcome users from a broader spectrum. It produces ebooks, typically using published picture books as a base, and adding sign language videos, where the countries and languages involved right now number a dozen, but the global interest is growing steadily. The project has developed a workflow that is easily implementable using commercial off-the-shelf software, or open source alternatives, with an aim of making the production of bimodal-bilingual ebooks both readily accessible and efficient.