An intelligent ecosystem to improve the information access and knowledge development about sexual and reproductive health on deaf women in Cuenca, Ecuador

© SPIE. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only. Currently, the deaf women's community must face the lack of several resources related to their personal and professional development: (i) the lack of bilingualism (sign language and written language), (ii) the lack of appropriate knowledge about the local language sign; and (iii) the scarcity of educational plans on Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH). This situation triggers several problems, such as the transmission of sexually trans- mitted diseases, unwanted pregnancy in adolescence, sexual violence and complications during pregnancy. For these reasons, in this document, we present an intelligent ecosystem and an educational methodology aimed at improving access to SRH programs in Ecuadorian Sign Language (ESL), with the aim of improving access to information and knowledge in SRH through methodologies based on interactive and dynamic learning environments capable of responding to the specific needs of deaf people. Our proposal relies on an expert system based on rules-reasoning, and an educational web-environment. This approach was tested with 30 volunteers (26 deaf women and 4 interpreters in ESL), evaluating the contents that are housed within the system (content quality, the coherence of the applied methodology, access to the environment,.). The results are encouraging and have shown that it is necessary to implement interactive programs for the support of the SRH.