Elamur Research⌕
☰
home / papers / 2026 / Introducing VISTA-SL: A Multilingual e-Learning Platform for Deaf and Hearing Learners of Sign Languages

Introducing VISTA-SL: A Multilingual e-Learning Platform for Deaf and Hearing Learners of Sign Languages

Paper · 2026 · Irene Murtagh, Marc Schulder, Annika Herrmann et al.

Summary

Europe lacks qualified sign language teachers and good learning materials, even as sign languages gain legal recognition. This paper presents VISTA-SL, an Erasmus+ project that is building a web-based e-learning platform meant to support, not replace, classroom teaching. It covers four sign languages: DGS, GSL, ISL and NGT. Its curricula are coordinated across languages and cover vocabulary, grammar, interaction and Deaf culture. They are loosely aligned with CEFR and ProSign descriptors but use their own level structure. Lessons use videos of deaf L1 signers and include games. The technical side combines three components: augmented-reality feedback that tracks key points on the learner's hands, face and body posture as they sign, controllable 3D signing avatars, and an LLM-based virtual instructor that coaches learners based on their progress. Deaf people take part at every stage, as researchers, teachers and focus-group members, and these groups guide both the content and the interface. The paper describes a platform still in development and reports no evaluation results. Its value is a participatory, multilingual design that offers feedback richer than a simple right/wrong judgement, serving both signers and newcomers to signing.

Key points

  • The project involves six partner institutions in five countries (Ireland, Germany, Greece, Spain, Netherlands). It extends a prototype from the earlier CAT-SL project.
  • It targets four languages, German (DGS), Greek (GSL), Irish (ISL) and Dutch (NGT) Sign Language, with entries cross-linked so learners can compare them.
  • It serves two learner groups: L2M1 (signers learning another sign language) and L2M2 (people new to the visual modality).
  • Feedback goes beyond binary classification. Learners receive visual, textual and numerical guidance from landmark detection, plus avatar demonstrations and LLM-driven personalised coaching.
  • Gamification includes achievement badges and progress tracking. The design is modular and privacy-preserving, and the platform is available at vista-sl.eu.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🎓Universitat Pompeu FabraBarcelona · Spain47 works · 11,723 citations🎓Universität HamburgHamburg · Germany79 works · 5,422 citations🎓Technological University DublinDublin · Ireland5 works · 188 citations

 Fields, topics and concepts

📚 Shelves 6The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Computer Science · 16,667 worksPsychology · 1,552 worksDevelopmental and Educational Psychology · 499 worksHuman-Computer Interaction · 141 worksHealth Professions · 69 worksOccupational Therapy · 9 works

🧭 Topics 1Research subjects and languages the work is about.Multilingual & cross-lingual NLP · 828 works

Cite

Cite as Irene Murtagh, Marc Schulder, Annika Herrmann, Liona Paulus, Julian Bleicken, Kostas Blekos, Athanasios Konstantakopoulos, Klimis Antzakas, Dimitrios Kosmopoulos, Eva Valls, Ricardo Marques, Josep Blat, Konstantinos Karampidis and Ben Elsendoorn. 2026. Introducing VISTA-SL: A Multilingual e-Learning Platform for Deaf and Hearing Learners of Sign Languages. Proceedings of the LREC 2026 12th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Language in Motion.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.63317/5dk2bc2vn43t

@inproceedings{murtagh2026introducing,
  title = {{Introducing VISTA-SL: A Multilingual e-Learning Platform for Deaf and Hearing Learners of Sign Languages}},
  author = {Irene Murtagh, Marc Schulder, Annika Herrmann, Liona Paulus, Julian Bleicken, Kostas Blekos, Athanasios Konstantakopoulos, Klimis Antzakas, Dimitrios Kosmopoulos, Eva Valls, Ricardo Marques, Josep Blat, Konstantinos Karampidis and Ben Elsendoorn},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the LREC 2026 12th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Language in Motion},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.63317/5dk2bc2vn43t},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.63317/5dk2bc2vn43t}
}

References

50 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

  1. Md Shahinur Alam, Jason Lamberton, Jianye Wang, Carly Leannah, Sarah Miller, Joseph Palagano, Myles de Bastion, Heather L. Smith, Melissa Malzkuhn, and Lorna C. Quandt. 2024. ASL champ!: a virtual reality game with deep-learning driven sign recognition. Computers & Education: X Reality, 4:100059. find
  2. Wajdi Aljedaani, Rrezarta Krasniqi, Sanaa Aljedaani, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Stephanie Ludi, and Khaled Al-Raddah. 2023. If online learning works for you, what about deaf students? emerging challenges of online learning for deaf and hearing-impaired students during COVID-19: a literature review. Unive… find
  3. Deborah Chen Pichler and Elena Koulidobrova. 2015. Acquisition of sign language as a second language. In Marc Marschark and Patricia Elizabeth Spencer, editors, The Oxford Handbook of Deaf Studies in Language, Oxford Library of Psychology, chapter 14, pages 218–230. Oxford University Press. find
  4. Council of Europe. 2020. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Companion Volume. Council of Europe Publishing, Strasburg. find
  5. Filiz Altun. 2025. Analysis of the UNCRPD committee recommendations on the implementation of article 24 on the right to inclusive education. EASPD report, European Association of Service providers for Persons with Disabilities, Brussels, Belgium. find
  6. Aashaka Desai, Maartje De Meulder, Julie A. Hochgesang, Annemarie Kocab, and Alex X. Lu. 2024. Systemic biases in sign language AI research: A deaf-led call to reevaluate research agendas. In Proceedings of the LREC-COLING 2024 11th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Ev… find
  7. Nikolaos Arvanitis, Evangelos Sartinas, and Dimitrios Kosmopoulos. 2023. Procrustes-dtw: Dynamic time warping variant for the recognition of sign language utterances. In 2023 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing Workshops (ICASSPW), pages 1–5. find
  8. Daphne Economou, Melissa Russi, Ioannis Douma-nis, Markos Mentzelopoulos, Vassiliki Bouki, and Jeffery Ferguson. 2020. Using serious games for learning British Sign Language combining video, enhanced interactivity, and VR technology. Journal of Universal Computer Science, 26(8):996–1016. find
  9. Alessia Battisti. 2025. Analysis and Assessment of Continuous Swiss German Sign Language Production of Adult Learners. Dissertation, University of Zurich. find
  10. Klaudia Grote, Horst Sieprath, and Bastian Staudt. 2018. Deaf Didaktik? Weshalb wir eine spezielle Didaktik für den Unterricht in Gebärdensprache benötigen. Das Zeichen, 110:2–13. find
  11. Alessia Battisti and Sarah Ebling. 2024. Automatic annotation elaboration as feedback to sign language learners. In Proceedings of the 18th Linguistic Annotation Workshop (LAW-XVIII), pages 46–60, St. Julians, Malta. Association for Computational Linguistics. find
  12. Raychelle Harris, Heidi M. Holmes, and Donna M. Mertens. 2009. Research ethics in sign language communities. Sign Language Studies, 9(2):104– 131. find
  13. Alessia Battisti, Katja Tissi, Sandra Sidler-Miserez, and Sarah Ebling. 2024. Advancing annotation for continuous data in Swiss German Sign Language. In Proceedings of the LREC-COLING 2024 11th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Evaluation of Sign Language Resources, pa… find
  14. Kostas Blekos, Dimitrios Kosmopoulos, and Klimis Antzakas. 2026. A vision-based system for au-Saad Hassan, Sooyeon Lee, Dimitris Metaxas, Carol Neidle, and Matt Huenerfauth. 2022. Understanding ASL learners’ preferences for a sign language recording and automatic feedback system to support self-stud… find
  15. Franz Holzknecht, Sandrine Tornay, Alessia Battisti, Aaron Olaf Batty, Katja Tissi, Tobias Haug, and Sarah Ebling. 2024. Automated sign language vocabulary assessment: Comparing human and machine ratings and studying learner perceptions. Language Assessment Quarterly, 21(3):245–265. policy and pract… find
  16. Matt Huenerfauth, Elaine Gale, Brian Penly, Sree Pillutla, Mackenzie Willard, and Dhananjai Hariharan. 2017. Evaluation of language feedback methods for student videos of American Sign Language. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing, 10(1). find
  17. Luigi Lerose. 2025. Improving Your British Sign Language: A Guide to Proficient Use. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. find
  18. Ege Karar, Klaudia Grote, and Horst Sieprath. 2017. Deaf didactics: Why it is not enough just to teach bilingual. Presentation at the 3rd International Conference of the World Federation of the Deaf. find
  19. Vlasios Kasapakis, Elena Dzardanova, Spyros Vosinakis, and Androniki Agelada. 2024. Sign language in immersive virtual reality: design, development, and evaluation of a virtual reality learning environment prototype. Interactive Learning Environments, 32(10):6657–6671. find
  20. Daniel Kelly, John McDonald, and Charles Markham. 2008. A system for teaching sign language using live gesture feedback. In 2008 8th IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face & Gesture Recognition, pages 1–2, Amsterdam, Netherlands. IEEE. find
  21. Maria Kopf, Rehana Omardeen, and Davy Van Landuyt. 2023. Representation matters: The case for diversifying sign language avatars. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Workshop on Sign Language Translation and Avatar Technology, pages 1–5, Rhodes Island, Greece. IEEE. find
  22. Verena Krausneker and Sandra Schügerl. 2021. Best practice protocol on the use of sign language avatars. Technical report, Universität Wien, Vienna, Austria. find
  23. Annelies Kusters, Erin Moriarty, Amandine le Maire, Sanchayeeta Iyer, and Steven Emery. 2024. Deaf Mobility Studies: Exploring International Networks, Tourism, and Migration. Gallaudet University Press, Washington, DC. find
  24. Annelies Maria Jozef Kusters, Maartje De Meulder, and Dai O’Brien. 2017. Innovations in deaf studies: Critically mapping the field. In Annelies Kusters, Maartje De Meulder, and Dai O’Brien, editors, Innovations in Deaf Studies: The Role of Deaf Scholars, Perspectives on Deafness, pages 1–53. Oxford… find
  25. Paddy Ladd. 2022. The unrecognized curriculum: seeing through new eyes: deaf cultures and deaf pedagogies. DawnSignPress, San Diego. find
  26. Lorraine Leeson and Beppie van den Bogaerde. 2020. (What we don’t know about) sign languages in higher education in Europe: Mapping Camillo Lugaresi, Jiuqiang Tang, Hadon Nash, Chris McClanahan, Esha Uboweja, Michael Hays, Fan Zhang, Chuo-Ling Chang, Ming Guang Yong, Juhyun Lee, Wan-Teh Chang, Wei H… — [arXiv:1906.08172](https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.08172) find
  27. Elizabeth S. Mathews. 2020. Signs of equity: Access to teacher education for deaf students in the Republic of Ireland. Sign Language Studies, 21(1):68–97. find
  28. Christiane Metzger. 2008. Lernstrategien erwachsener L2-Lerner der Deutschen Gebärdensprache: eine Analyse auf der Grundlage handlungstheoretischer und kognitionswis-senschaftlicher Modelle. Ph.D. thesis, Narr, G, Tübingen. find
  29. Katerina Papadimitriou, Gerasimos Potamianos, Galini Sapountzaki, Theodoros Goulas, Eleni Efthimiou, Stavroula-Evita Fotinea, and Petros Maragos. 2025. Greek sign language recognition for an education platform. Universal Access in the Information Society, 24:51–68. find
  30. Prajwal Paudyal, Ayan Banerjee, and Sandeep Gupta. 2020. On evaluating the effects of feedback for Sign language learning using Explainable AI. In Companion Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, IUI ’20 Companion, pages 83–84. Association for Computing Mach… find
  31. Prajwal Paudyal, Junghyo Lee, Azamat Kamzin, Mohamad Soudki, A. Banerjee, and S. Gupta. 2019. Learn2Sign: Explainable AI for Sign Language Learning. In Joint Proceedings of the ACM IUI 2019 Workshops – Workshop on Explainable Smart Systems - ExSS. find
  32. Han Duy Phan, Kirsten Ellis, and Alan Dorin. 2018. MIC, an interactive sign language teaching system. In Proceedings of the 30th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction, OzCHI ’18, pages 544–547. Association for Computing Machinery. find
  33. Han Duy Phan, Kirsten Ellis, Alan Dorin, and Patrick Olivier. 2020. Feedback strategies for embodied agents to enhance sign language vocabulary learning. In Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, Iva ’20, pages 1–8. Association for Computing Machinery. find
  34. Jaume Pozo, Eva Valls-Garolera, and Víctor Ubieto. 2025. Animics. https://github.com/ upf-gti/animics/. Last commit: 25-03-2026, in development. ↗
  35. Lorna Quandt. 2020. Teaching ASL signs using signing avatars and immersive learning in virtual reality. In Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, pages 1–4, Online. Association for Computing Machinery. find
  36. Lorna C. Quandt, Athena Willis, Melody Schwenk, Kaitlyn Weeks, and Ruthie Ferster. 2022. Attitudes toward signing avatars vary depending on hearing status, age of signed language acquisition, and avatar type. Frontiers in Psychology, 13:730917. find
  37. Christian Rathmann, Ronice Müller de Quadros, Thomas Geißler, Christian Peters, Francisco Fernandes, Milene Peixer Loio, and Diego França. 2024. VisuoLab: Building a sign language multilingual, multimodal and multifunctional platform. In Proceedings of the LREC-COLING 2024 11th Workshop on the Repre… find
  38. Krister Schönström and Ingela Holmström. 2022. L2M1 and L2M2 acquisition of sign lexicon: The impact of multimodality on the sign second language acquisition. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. find
  39. Nada Shahin and Leila Ismail. 2024. From rule-based models to deep learning transformers architectures for natural language processing and sign language translation systems: Survey, taxonomy and performance evaluation. Artificial Intelligence Review, 57:271. find
  40. Qijia Shao, Amy Sniffen, Julien Blanchet, Megan E. Hillis, Xinyu Shi, Themistoklis K. Haris, Jason Liu, Jason Lamberton, Melissa Malzkuhn, Lorna C. Quandt, James Mahoney, David J. M. Kraemer, Xia Zhou, and Devin Balkcom. 2020. Teaching American Sign Language in mixed reality. In Proceedings of the A… find
  41. Sihan Tan, Nabeela Khan, Zhaoyi An, Yoshitaka Ando, Rei Kawakami, and Kazuhiro Nakadai. 2024. A review of deep learning-based approaches to sign language processing. Advanced Robotics, 38(23):1649–1667. find
  42. Mukhiddin Toshpulatov, Wookey Lee, Jaesung Jun, and Suan Lee. 2025. Deep learning pathways for automatic sign language processing. Pattern Recognition, 164:111475. find
  43. Nghe-Nhan Truong, Truong-Dong Do, Thien-Sang Le Nguyen, Minh-Thien Duong, Thanh-Hai Nguyen, and My-Ha Le. 2022. A vision-based hand-sign language teaching system using deep neural network: Methodology and experiments. In 2022 International Workshop on Intelligent Systems (IWIS), pages 1–6. find
  44. Víctor Ubieto, Jaume Pozo, Eva Valls, Beatriz Cabrero-Daniel, and Josep Blat. 2024. Sign language synthesis: Current signing avatar systems and representation. In Andy Way, Lorraine Leeson, and Dimitar Shterionov, editors, Sign Language Machine Translation, number 5 in Machine Translation: Technolog… find
  45. Eva Valls-Garolera, Jaume Pozo, , and Carolina del Corral. 2025. Performs. https://github.com/upf-gti/performs/. Last commit: 25-03-2026, in development. ↗
  46. J. Wang. 2025. Human-Centred American Sign Language Learning: Effects of Interface Modality, Game Mechanics, and Artificial Intelligence-Based Diagnostic Guidance. Doctoral thesis, Durham University. find
  47. Jindi Wang, Ioannis Ivrissimtzis, Zhaoxing Li, Yun-zhan Zhou, and Lei Shi. 2023. Exploring the potential of immersive virtual environments for learning American Sign Language. In Responsive and Sustainable Educational Futures, pages 459–474. Springer. find
  48. Bencie Woll. 2012. Second language acquisition of sign language. In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. John Wiley & Sons. find
  49. Yanxiao Zhang, Yuecong Min, and Xilin Chen. 2021. Teaching Chinese Sign Language with a smartphone. Virtual Reality & Intelligent Hardware, 3(3):248–260. find
  50. Linda Z. Suri and Kathleen F. McCoy. 1993. A methodology for developing an error taxonomy for a computer assisted language learning tool for second language learners. Technical Report 93-16, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA. find

Updated

↑ back to top

This page in Markdown → https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/murtagh-2026-introducing-vista-sl-multilingual-e/