Education programmes around the world, and in our own country, are usually designed for people without disabilities, and people with disabilities are often added into them later. This created a real gap in the education of deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. When schools moved to distance learning during the pandemic, that gap became even more visible: live lessons had no live transcription or subtitles, which was a serious obstacle for deaf and hard-of-hearing people who rely on lip reading. Around 80 million people in Europe live with a disability, and more than 70% of them live on or below the poverty line. About 50 million people in Europe are deaf or hard of hearing; more than half of them are unemployed, and most of those who do find work end up in low-paid, low-skilled jobs. The shortage of teachers who know sign language, together with the lack of educational materials in sign language, made vocational training even harder for deaf and hard-of-hearing people. No similar project existed for the field of gastronomy. So we set out to fill that gap.

 

Working together with partner organisations from Germany, Portugal, Turkey, Italy and Sweden, we set out to remove the barriers facing deaf and hard-of-hearing people who wanted to become a cook or chef, or to receive vocational training in this field. Our goal was to give them access to a distance learning programme, whenever and wherever they wanted, that was completely free of charge and open to everyone. To do this, we built a distance learning system that meets the SCORM standard and includes assessment and evaluation. We developed a curriculum to help deaf and hard-of-hearing people become cooks or chefs, or improve their existing skills, and we created all the learning content in the sign language of each partner country. We also produced a culinary terminology dictionary in sign language for each partner country — the first study of its kind in this field.

 

We built this project for deaf and hard-of-hearing people who wanted vocational training in gastronomy, who were already working in the field, or who wanted to improve their skills. Our participants gained access to a completely free learning system, in their own native language — sign language — whenever and wherever they wanted. They had the chance to learn about the sign languages of other countries, and the opportunity to take part in national and international cooking competitions.

 

Over the course of the project, more than one hundred deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals and more than two hundred hearing individuals completed our distance learning programme. We introduced our system to three vocational high schools and one higher education institution, where students used it as online course material. More than 150 people took part in the awareness and dissemination events we held across five countries. Strong cooperation also grew between our partner organisations along the way. We strengthened national and international cooperation in vocational education, sign language studies, dictionary development and distance learning systems, and we built new connections with local authorities, institutions, municipalities and NGOs.

 

Our project contributed to Europe's linguistic diversity, to intercultural understanding, and to raising the quality of sign language teaching. We helped make Europe's culinary heritage more visible and gave disadvantaged groups better access to it. We also set an example for future work on digital transformation and inclusive vocational education. Our project is now complete, but we don't intend to stop here. To carry these results forward into new countries, we are planning a Transfer of Innovation project with three new partners.