AWARD project was created with the aim of developing a tool to facilitate the learning process of reading in deaf children. That is, it pretends to design a computer program (for children aged from 3 to 16 years) that best suits their specific needs and help to improve their reading ability.

Apart from oral language, written language is a basic tool for accessing information, knowledge and culture. Precisely because of this, reading becomes even more important in students who are deprived of the ear canal for receiving oral information. However, despite the development of literacy skills will provide a source of information of particular relevance, a significant proportion of children with hearing problems have serious difficulties in achieving reading proficiency levels.

Reading is a complex cognitive activity. Unlike the oral language that is acquired naturally in hearing children before school entry (as long as context conditions are appropriate), reading requires a formal education. Generally, hearing children read often reach a functional level by the end of the fourth year of schooling (at age 10, approximately). However, children with hearing impairments have a great difficulty in achieving a level of reading comprehension that allow them to be autonomous learners.

To develop a tool with these characteristics, it is necessary to start from a previous study that helps us to understand the processes and alternative strategies developed in our neurocognitive system to mediate the understanding of written language when you can not naturally acquire the oral language or when a visual mode of communication is used (eg, sign language).