Deaf and hearing students' eye gaze collaboration

Abstract

In mainstreamed lectures, deaf students face decision-making challenges in shifting attention from looking at the visual representation of the lecture audio, i.e., sign language interpreter or captions. They also face challenges in looking at the simultaneous lecture visual source, i.e., slides, whiteboard or demonstration. To reduce the decision-making challenge for deaf student subjects, we analyze the efficacy of using hearing students' eye gaze and target as reference cues in lectures. When deaf students view the same lectures with reference cues, they show less delay in switching to the active visual information source and report high satisfaction with the reference cues. The students who liked the cued notifications were more likely to demonstrate reduction in delay time associated with shifting visual attention. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.