The Use of Computational Artifacts to Support Deaf Learning: An Approach Based on the Direct Way Methodology Marta Angélica Montiel Ferreira 1(&) , Juliana Bueno 2 , Rodrigo Bonacin 1,3 , and Laura Sánchez García 2 1 FACCAMP, Rua Guatemala, 167, Campo Limpo Paulista, SP 13231-230, Brazil zmontefer@gmail.com, rodrigo.bonacin@cti.gov.br 2 Informatics Department, Federal University of Paraná, Centro Politécnico, Jardim das Américas, Curitiba, PR, Brazil {juliana,laura}@inf.ufpr.br 3 Center for Information Technology Renato Archer, Rodovia Dom Pedro I, Km 143,6, Campinas, SP 13069-901, Brazil Abstract. Deaf users face various dif ficulties accessing the Web. These dif fi- culties are frequently due to low skills on written language, which is a conse- quence of approaches that do not favor appropriate methods such as bilingual literacy. This method make use of sign language skills to teach a second written language. In this paper, we present studies with deaf students that explore the direct way methodology articulated with computational artifacts aiming to pro- mote the bilingual literacy. This article presents 10 meetings where we performed learning activities with 3 teachers and 12 deaf students. The objective was to apply our approach to improve the reading and writing skills on Portuguese language, as a second language. The studies point out positive results, and the possibility of exploring this approach from the early years of child literacy. Keywords: Web accessibility Á Deaf accessibility Á Deaf literacy Á Direct way methodology 1 Introduction Deaf literacy challenges and barriers have been addressed by various studies [2, 6, 8]. Such challenges and barriers are related to numerous issues, which occur even when the deaf students are immersed in a bilingual context (i.e., when the first language is a sign language – L1 and the second language is a written language – L2). A key issue is the adoption of inappropriate bilingual education strategies, which are mostly guided by listeners teaching contexts (i.e., in alphabetization principles) [11]. Principles of alphabetization based on the phonetics are indeed not suitable for deaf learning, which must be based on their own literacy context [2, 5]. Although this is highly accepted, there are many open questions related to deaf literacy methods, such as: “Are there methods able to promote fully literacy skills on deaf student?” and “Could deaf students to become critical readers?” © Springer International Publishing AG 2017 M. Antona and C. Stephanidis (Eds.): UAHCI 2017, Part III, LNCS 10279, pp. 198–209, 2017. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-58700-4_17