LDS ASL Materials app

ASL (American Sign Language) LDS materials app? Book of Mormon, A of F, Scripture Stories, Gospel Principles, True to the Faith, Preach My Gospel, Missionary Discussions.

I'm not sure what it would take to get an app focused completely on ASL materials, but maybe there's something more that could be done to better incorporate ASL materials into the apps that already exist.

I'm curious to get your feedback on how members normally use ASL materials. What are the circumstances where it would be easier for a member to watch an ASL video instead of just reading the text? Do you prefer to read the text side-by-side with the video? How are or could ASL materials be used at church, at home, and in public? Would they be used differently in an ASL ward?

Usually DVD or computer videos -preferably with ASL & subtitles or CC. Most have a DVD player and/or Ipad and/or Iphone. With a free ASL app, they could have materials wherever they go. Also, they would not have to worry about needing an interpreter, buying DVD's, or literacy for that matter.

sbradshaw wrote:I'm not sure what it would take to get an app focused completely on ASL materials, but maybe there's something more that could be done to better incorporate ASL materials into the apps that already exist.

Note the limited content for ASL. What there is can be found here.

I think if what is available can be added to the video section of the GL app, that would be a good start that should be fairly easy to do. Anything more is going to require source material that may not currently exist.

sbradshaw wrote:I'm curious to get your feedback on how members normally use ASL materials. What are the circumstances where it would be easier for a member to watch an ASL video instead of just reading the text? Do you prefer to read the text side-by-side with the video? How are or could ASL materials be used at church, at home, and in public? Would they be used differently in an ASL ward?

I know a bit about the deaf. There's two broad groups: Ones who were deaf before leaning any language and those who went deaf later. ASL isn't English translated into hand symbols - it's a separate language that tends to drop small words and uses a different sentence structure then English. As a result, those who became deaf early are effectively ESL(English as a Second language) students. These are the ones that have the greatest need for ASL material.

The second group probably know English well enough that the existing scriptures satisfy their needs.

Side-by-side would be useful for those studying language. (Either the deaf studying English or translators working on their ASL.) But I think you're going to run into limitations on what's available. I don't see captioning on any ASL video, and I haven't seen CC on ASL broadcasts of conference. The latter might be solvable by syncing the ASL video with the captioning of the English video.

Given that the D&C and Bible isn't on ASL, I'm not sure where that leaves improving the formatting on the priority list.

We'll be putting ASL content into the LDS Music app eventually (hopefully sooner rather than later). What I was thinking initially is putting ASL Video as an option where Music and Vocals and Music Only are options (after pressing the play button at the bottom of song view). Do you think this would be a useful place, or do you think grouping it as an entirely different language would be better (where you can currently choose between English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish)?

I see that this topic came up a year ago too, with no reply
https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=13616

I think it would be counter-intuitive to put it in the music app. GL has a place for videos, and it streams them. So it seems like the technology it needs is there, it just needs it's own classification at the right level. (If you're not going to stream, then how much can you store on a device? We're talking about hours and hours of video here.)

The ASL scriptures are silent. ASL General Conference has sound.

sbradshaw wrote:I see that this topic came up a year ago too, with no reply
https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=13616

Same OP.

Glad to see that this is being discussed. I'm in an ASL ward and we could use these materials more effectively if they would be built in to ASL centric apps for members who use ASL. It would probably (hopefully) prompt Special Curriculum and translation to make sure material is either translated into ASL or made available with Captioning.

Thanks for giving consideration to this.

I believe that the ASL translation for Hymn and the Children's Song Book is used quite frequently outside of the ASL wards as well.