It is important for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) children to develop an interest in auditory information and an acceptance of their hearing, as well as to broaden their interest in objects through sounds. For enjoyable experiences outside the classroom, we focused on zoos, where visitors can learn not only about ecology but also about the feelings and sociality of animals through their lively behavior and sounds. It is desirable to enrich the learning of DHH children who have difficulties obtaining information from animal sounds in zoos by designing experiences associated with animal sounds.

We have developed an iOS application, ZooPlay, to learn that everyone hears and receives sounds differently and to help DHH children become interested in sound. With the application, we experimented with DHH children and their families to determine whether DHH children enjoyed learning, gained an interest in sound, and accepted their hearing.

ZooPlay includes functions as follows:
1) “Creative onomatopoeia of animal sounds” to understand that each person hears sounds differently. Creative onomatopoeia is not the typical one, such as “dog woof woof,” but strings that present what you hear as it is. Preschool kids provided the onomatopoeia, which is shown in the video of the animal.
2) “Animation to express emotion in sounds and trivia” to draw interest in sounds showing animals' emotions. Moving images were made from still photos of animals that move differently according to their feelings. The image with comic notes and a spectrograph with a sequence bar accompanies the animal sound. The trivia explains the animal, what they say if they speak human language, a short description of the situations of the sound, and its status as an endangered species.

The animals featured in the app are elephants, Asian small-clawed otters, penguins, and lions. The criteria for selection were that they were familiar, made a lot of noise, had easy-to-understand behaviors, and could be used to educate people about biodiversity conservation.

We experimented with ZooPlay at the Kamine Zoo in Japan. Five DHH primary school and kindergarten children and their families participated, including four hearing siblings. We handed all children an iPhone or iPad on which ZooPlay was installed. The participants could use the application and walk around the zoo as usual. ZooPlay notifies users the animal in the application is nearby. We gave each family a video camera to take pictures while walking around the zoo. After the zoo walk with the application, we asked them to complete a questionnaire. It took around two hours.

Of the nine children, eight rated the program enjoyable and wanted to learn more about animals and see more different sounds. One DHH child did not believe that the way people hear the sounds is different. We obtained positive keywords such as “it was fun,” “it was interesting,” “I learned for the first time,” and “I was happy.”

We were able to show that the experience of using the application at the zoo was a fun way for DHH children to learn and become interested in sound, but still, it is being determined whether they could accept their hearing. In the future, we will add a participatory function for users to submit expressions for sounds they hear freely, and the results will be reflected as creative onomatopoeia in real time. Then, we will conduct another verification at the zoo.

Keywords: Deaf and hard of hearing children, learning through sounds, zoo.