A Participatory Research Approach to develop an Arabic Symbol

Dictionary

Maryam’s Story

EA DraffanNadine Zeinoun

• Arabic AAC users in Qatar are supported by English speaking therapists and specialist teachers.

• Use of externally developed AAC symbols systems to aid communication which can highlight cultural differences

• Arabic, English and other languages may all be spoken during a day in the life of the AAC user (expats make up 86% of Qatar / Nannies/drivers speak English)

Introduction

Research Background• Lack of research regarding local core AAC user

vocabulary

• No freely available culturally sensitive Arabic AAC symbols

• The Arabic language is ‘diglossic’ with written text often differing from the spoken Arabic dialects and

• Linguistically Arabic is complex!

Participatory Approach

Degrees of participant involvement: adapted by Radermacher (2006) from Fajerman and Treseder (2000)

• Participation of stakeholders at the outset via online forum and f2f meetings

• Collaboration with ARASAAC as a result of symbol set voting to complement symbols in use.

• Graphic designer using Google+ to test initial symbol designs with team members

• Symbols uploaded to a bespoke Symbol Manager System with the corresponding lexical entries, definitions, parts of speech and relevant categories in English and Arabic.

• Online voting and analysis takes place • News of all project actions published.

Methodology

Symbol Manager -Lexical entry for ‘thank you’

• 63 participants - 2341 votes for 65 symbols – mean ratings greater than 3.5.

• Comments showed participants preferred coloured symbols and wanted gender illustrated for verbs rather than stick characters.

• Failed symbols sent back to the graphic designer for further adaptations

• Process repeated until the symbol accepted by the majority of voters.

Initial Results for Symbol Voting

Results from Core Vocabulary Data• Over 688 initial categorised lexical entries• Higher number of nouns were used in the Arabic

core vocabulary lists compared to English lists in both conversational and literacy-based lists (45% vs 20% in top 300 words).

• Arabic AAC population uses nouns and verbs more than any other parts of speech (50% vs 20% respectively).

• Pronouns make up around 20% of the Arabic lists and adverbs represented less than 5%. The latter two are believed to be low in frequency due to the linguistic characteristics of Arabic.

Discussion & Conclusion

• Participatory approaches may mean many more iterations of symbol development than expected. Religion, clothing, symbol types and grammatical issues require careful discussion

• Further work is still required to validate that the input from a tightly defined user group has value in meeting the needs of an extended community.

• The final dictionary should have applicability to those people struggling to interpret traditional Arabic text, by enhancing complex vocabulary with a symbol representing the concept

• Second language learning and signage

Impact - Maryam is telling her teacher what she did over the weekend

األوالد مع الفريج ملعب في لعبت

لح��م مشبوس واق��ف، س��وق ف��ي وأخوات��ي اخوان��ي م��ع أكل��تدجاج وبرياني

المالبس اشترينا و صديقاتي مع تسوقت ثم

في

فيمع

معثم

مع

و و

و

www.tawasolsymbols.org

http://www.slideshare.net/eadraffan/a-participatory-research-approach-to-develop-an-arabic-symbol-dictionary

Thank you