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IADIS International Conference WWW/Internet 2010TECHNOLOGICAL ARTIFACTS FOR SOCIALINCLUSION: STRUCTURE OF THE BRAZILIAN SIGNLANGUAGE (LIBRAS), GESTURES FOR CITIZENSHIPCayley Guimarães, Diego R. Antunes, Daniela F. G. Trindade, Rafaella A. L. Silva,Sueli Fernandes, Aléssio M. Jr. and Laura Sánchez GarcíaUniversidade Federal do Paraná – UFPRABSTRACTThe Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) is the language used by the members of the deaf community, academia and relatedcommunities for access to information, citizenship, literacy, among others. The lack of adequate tools in Libras plays amajor role in social exclusion and lack of citizenship of the deaf. In order to aid social inclusion of the deaf, taken here tomean a real access to full citizenship, the significant gap of technological artifacts must be filled. This paper presents amodel of the computational description of the phonetic structure of Libras that will serve as the foundation stone of a vastset of tools to be constructed. This model will be used to create a sample of representative signs to aid the recording of abase of videos whose aim is to support the development of tools to support genuine social inclusion of the deaf.KEYWORDSLibras, Accessibility, Citizenship, Computational Model.1. INTRODUCTIONHistorically, deaf people were treated as having deficiencies, which set them apart from “normality”, ensuingexclusion and prejudices. Nowadays, the deaf are finally starting to be regarded as members of a minoritywhose inclusion aggregates social, political and citizenship dimensions, which include access to information,education, literacy, aid tools etc. Bearers of an identity, culture and other elements that constitute acommunity, the deaf need tools to help them to communicate among each other and with other members ofthe society as a whole. A pillar of such is the Brazilian Sign Language (Libras). Libras is a legitimatelinguistic system, with rules and structure (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics) thatmakes it a suitable candidate for computational representation.This article presents a computational model of the structure of signs in Libras, based on phonologicalmodels of the sign languages. The model presented in this article will be used to generate a representativesample set of signs to be recorded in videos, and described computationally according to the proposed model(that may be represented in many data structures, but will be exemplified here by XML).2. A WORLD OF GESTURESFor Skliar (1999) the deaf communication issue should not be approached only as a medical problem;instead, deaf people´s issues demand social, political and citizenship dimensions. Linguistic conceptionsshould be used, thus removing the deaf persons from the deficiency realm and bringing them to a status ofbelonging to a minority outside orality. Fernandes (2006) advocates that the use of the sign language by adeaf person implies a specific relationship of the deaf with her own world, a different way of the deaf beingherself. The historical abandonment and lack of research implies directly in the exclusion of the deaf from theoral society.Santos (2002) conclaims science to not only describe the world, but to understand it intimately and tounveil the human possibilities, turning the knowledge into practical, thus leading to inclusion. In this sense,267