Studies on Deaf Mobile Application: Need for Functionalities and Requirements

Deaf people are normally considered to be people that do not need any mobile technology due to the inabilities of hearing and talking. However, many deaf are using mobile phone in their daily life for various purposes such as communication and learning. Many studies have attempted to identify the need of deaf people in mobile application and level of usage of the applications. Requirement for deaf mobile applications need to be analysed to ensure the disabilities need are instilled into the mobile applications developed for them. Universal design is understandable to comply every user needs, however specific disability is argued by the authors to have different need and requirements. These differences are among the reasons for these applications being developed to target for a specific group of people, however they are less usable and later abandoned. This paper focuses on studying the requirements needed by the deaf for mobile applications. Previous literature was conducted it can be concluded that graphic, text, multimedia and sign language interpreter are among mostly required features to be included in their mobile application to ensure the applications are usable for this community