IRGA 2026 - ReDesignE

In a society often shaped by and for hearing people, the employment integration of deaf and hard-of-hearing workers raises major issues regarding social participation. The ReDesignE (Regulation and Design of Exchange) project is based on the observation that these workers perform “extra work” on a daily basis—work that is often invisible—to compensate for communication barriers. These constant efforts to ensure the exchange of information and collaboration lead to increased fatigue and heighten the risk of psychosocial distress.

Given the diversity of profiles (degrees of hearing loss, use of French Sign Language or French, and reliance on sign language or speech), current approaches often focus on individual adaptation through technical (hearing aids), human (interpretation), or organizational measures. It is therefore up to the person who is deaf or hard of hearing to adapt. The ReDesignE project proposes a paradigm shift: making accessibility a collective responsibility rather than an individual burden.

The central objective is to analyze and transform communication dynamics within mixed-gender teams using a socio-technical approach inspired by the “talking stick” principle. There are two key challenges:

• Analyzing barriers to participation:
  Understanding what prevents or hinders the work of deaf and hard-of-hearing workers in various situations (in-person, remote, formal, and informal settings).
• Analyzing the Transformation of Collective Practices:
  Examining how the introduction of a regulatory tool alters the rules of interaction and redistributes the burden of accessibility across the entire group, using a tool to visualize the flow of speech and a sociolinguistic analysis of interactions.

ReDesignE aims to bring together an interdisciplinary research community at the regional and national levels. The project brings together the expertise of six researchers from the University ofUniversité Grenoble Alpes (UGA) from three laboratories: CERAG (Management, Information Systems, Human Resources); LIG (Human-Computer Interaction); and LIDILEM (Sociolinguistics in the Context of Deafness).

With a focus on participatory research, this initiative aims to eventually build a diverse community bringing together researchers, public and private sector stakeholders, nonprofit organizations, and people who are deaf or hard of hearing.