Minister of Family and Social Services Mahinur Özdemir Göktaş said, "The Barrier-Free Communication Center for Persons with Hearing Impairments (AİLEM), established for citizens with hearing impairments, is actively used by 18.684 users today. The Ministry provides translation services for an average of 150 calls per day, ranging from shopping to family communication, from teacher-parent meetings to patient-doctor interractions. The center, which has been in service for about 2 years, has provided translation support for 98.319 calls by Turkish Sign Language interpreters."

Minister Göktaş stated that the Ministry carried out studies on digital transformation and barrier-free communication necessary for the access of persons with disabilities to the services offered with the goal of 100% accessibility, and in this context, Göktaş shared information about the projects carried out to eliminate the difficulties arising from the communication barrier for persons with hearing impairments and to facilitate their lives.

Minister Göktaş stated that the Ministry established the Barrier-Free Communication Center for the Persons with Hearing Impairments (AİLEM) to meet the communication needs of citizens with hearing-impairments in public, private and social life and said, " The communication center, which has become a common communication center for everyone using Turkish sign language, can be accessed through both the website of the Ministry and the mobile application. Turkish Sign Language Interpreters can be reached with one push of a button by the citizens. Currently, the communication center is actively accessed by 18.684 users. The Ministry provides translation services for an average of 150 calls per day, ranging from shopping to family communication, from teacher-parent meetings to patient-doctor interractions. In the center, which has been in service for about 2 years, Turkish Sign Language interpreters have provided translation support for 98.319 calls so far. With the services offered by AİLEM Barrier-Free Communication Center, it is aimed to facilitate the lives of all citizens with hearing impairments using Turkish Sign Language."

Göktaş reminded that the Ministry provided services with a total of 77 Turkish sign language interpreters in 52 provinces in the central and provincial institution of the Ministry, and said that in the last 3 years, the interpreters provided approximately 6.871 translation services to persons with hearing disabilities in areas such as land registry, municipality, governorship, notary offices, banks and healthcare.

"Turkish Sign Language (TID) Dictionary has been accessed more than 4.5 million times by 150 countries"

Minister Göktaş reminded that the Turkish Sign Language Project was carried out between 2015-2017 to compile and record the structural and pragmatic features of Turkish Sign Language, accepted as a natural language among the world languages, and to create a corpus.

Noting that the Current Turkish Sign Language Dictionary consisting of 2000 words with the highest frequency of use was created within the framework of the data collected within the scope of the project, Göktaş said: "The Current Turkish Sign Language Dictionary, which was made available to users by the Ministry in 2017 on the website https://tidsozluk.aile.gov.tr/, is based on the Turkish Sign Language corpus obtained from 26 provinces of the country and 113 native speakers of Turkish Sign Language. The dictionary includes a total of 11.428 videos prepared with three different types: sign, meaning and example, and different background colors according to their types."

Minister Göktaş stated that the contents of the dictionary, which was designed online in a video-based environment, were presented in Turkish Sign Language and Turkish, and noted the following:
"The user audience of the dictionary includes students with hearing impairments, those who want to learn Turkish sign language, interpreters, special education teachers and researchers. The Turkish Sign Language (TİD) Dictionary, prepared by the Ministry for those who wish to learn Turkish sign language, students studying in schools for persons with hearing impairments, and educators providing Turkish sign language training, has been accessed more than 4.5 million times from 150 countries since 2017."

Noting that users could find the sign they wanted to learn in the dictionary, which also included an English translation, with Turkish words or visual features of the sign, Göktaş said that with the help of sample videos, users could learn about the use of the relevant word in a sentence.