Letting every pupil learn Japanese hand alphabets with VIUAL interfaces

This paper discusses the effects of a visual interface for the Japanese hand language system. The system Practice! Yubimoji AIUEO (PYA) we are developing aims at letting ordinary pupils learn basic character expressions (AIUEO) of the Japanese hand characters (Yubimoji). Because very few pupils in Japan are currently able to communicate with handicapped people and there are only complex, expensive, and difficult software systems and/or textbooks available to learn the language system, it is critical to deliver easy-to-use software systems on a PC at elementary schools. This paper describes what are the principles of PYA, how PYA works, and why PYA is effective from pedagogical and computer human interaction points of view.