Picto for migrants
Ineke Schuurman, Leen Sevens, Vincent Vandeghinste and Frank Van Eynde

In Flanders, a specific set of pictographs (http://www.pictogrammendatabank.be/) is available for migrants, i.e. non-native speakers of Dutch (NT2-students), meant to help them to learn Dutch. The intended users live around Brussels (cf. https://www.derand.be/).
In a pilot study, we are making these pictographs digitally usable, like we did in previous projects for people with an intellectual disability (cf http://picto.ccl.kuleuven.be/): translating pictographs into text, translating text into pictographs (and check their spelling), ...

The range of intended NT2 users is rather broad, from people well educated in their mother tongue to people who are to a larger extent illiterate. And from youngsters addicted to smart phones and laptops (social media!) to people not at all familiar with online environments. Therefore their needs differ a lot, also because, especially in De Rand, their origin, and therefore their mother tongue and culture, differ largely.

It turns out that currently almost no migrant makes use of the available pictographs (for now distributed in booklets) in daily life, they either use Google Translate, ask friends to translate texts or make use of gestures (pointing to a sore knee, etc). That may change when the pictographs can be used online. On the other hand, in the context of education (NT2) there already is a real need, both by students and teachers.

In our presentation we will explain what the needs are, plus the whys and wherefores of them. And also what our needs are in order to be able to really meet their needs.