Deaf access to education in Ghana

Anna Garofalo completed her Global Capstone Scholar project in the fall of her senior year, 2021. She completed her project as a part of the Global Capstone curriculum, where she worked on the project for the duration of the semester. Anna was inspired to take on the topic of education by the film "Girl Rising." She has also had a lot of experience volunteering with Special Olympics and the HHS Best Buddies Club, so she was inspired to look into educational inequities for people with disabilities around the world. Her research brought her to the country of Ghana, where there is an extremely large disabled population, many of whom are hard of hearing. E-learning presented limitations to many students, but Anna came to recognize in her research that deaf students had it especially hard during these times. Anna took it upon herself to create an application that accommodates for the learning of these deaf students by providing a platform that can translate a teacher's lesson into sign language. Working with professors at Ghana's top hard-of-hearing universities, Anna plans to implement her artifact into the classroom of these universities to test the true functionality of the application. She hopes to make a difference for students with hearing impairments in not only Ghana, but deaf students around the world.