Dutch Sign Language (Nederlandse Gebarentaal, NGT) has been an official language in the Netherlands since 2021. ‘Fortunately, NGT is becoming more and more visible’, says Floris Roelofsen, professor of Formal Semantics and research leader at SignLab. ‘The Jeugdjournaal (news programme for young people) and the Achtuurjournaal (8 o’clock news) always have an NGT interpreter, for example, and NGT has also been used in recent films, such as Okedoeibedankt, and theatre performances, such as [meeuw]. However, there is still a lot of ground to be gained when it comes to a more inclusive society in which sign language has a prominent place.’

More than 300,000 children
In the game developed by SignLab and Prowise Learn, which contains more than 1,400 signs, children are introduced step by step to the NGT signs. Over 2,000 primary schools in the Netherlands use Taalzee, which means that more than 300,000 children have access to the game. Roelofsen: ‘We hope that lots of children will play it, and that deaf and hearing children will soon be able to communicate with each other more easily as a result.

Learning from data
The game is not only meant to teach children sign language. The researchers from the SignLab also want to use it to gain more insight into the language acquisition of NGT. Most language acquisition research still focuses on spoken languages and the research which is conducted into learning NGT is usually based on small groups of children.

The game in Taalzee will yield data from thousands of children, such as which signs they find most difficult to learn. NGT learning programmes can subsequently be improved based on that data. Roelofsen: ‘This is urgently needed, because there are few learning aids available for anyone who wants to learn sign language – with all the associated consequences. ‘About 95% of deaf children have hearing parents and the majority of those parents do not manage to learn sign language properly.’