Gökhan KAYA
The Founder​

Gökhan Kaya began his professional career in 1998 as a teacher at the Ministry of National Education of Türkiye, later serving in various roles as a teacher, department head, and school administrator.

In 2010, he brought Türkiye into the “Spread the Sign” project, the world’s largest online sign language dictionary, which was declared a Best Practice by the European Commission. Representing Türkiye as project coordinator for four consecutive years, he played a pivotal role in expanding access to sign language resources globally. In 2012, he assumed the role of General Coordinator for the project “Bilingual Vocational Education of Hearing-Impaired Individuals”, supported by the Turkish National Agency, which introduced an innovative vocational training model successfully integrated into the Ministry of National Education.

Over the past two decades, Kaya has led numerous pioneering projects at both national and international levels. He has collaborated with schools, NGOs, and universities across Europe—including in the UK, France, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Greece, Romania, Italy, Spain, Estonia, Austria, and Germany—earning recognition and awards from several countries.

To advance vocational sign language education, he founded the VSL (Vocational Sign Language) brand, under which multiple Erasmus+ Key Action 2 (VET) projects were implemented: VSL on Tourism, VSL on Finance, VSL on Medicine, and VSL on Kitchen–Deaf Chefs (www.vslontourism.com, www.vslonfinance.org, www.vslonmedicine.org, www.silentchefs.org
).

His project “Sign Guides”, which created a Tour Guiding Certificate Program for the Deaf community, was recognized as a Best Practice in 2016. The Turkish National Agency highlighted this initiative in its RAY-INNO study, listing it among the six most impactful projects in Türkiye between 2012 and 2019 (www.signguides.org).

Kaya has also designed projects integrating special education with software development, digital content, and distance learning systems. Among them, the Mavi Platform provided free resources to thousands of students requiring special education during the pandemic. He also led the ELSUPPORT Project, a multilingual distance learning system for individuals with autism (www.elsupport.org), and is currently expanding similar solutions through the project “Multidimensional Digital Educational Support for Dyslexia”.

Beyond project leadership, Kaya actively contributes to numerous social initiatives, including Mavi Pencere Academy, Psychology Literacy for Educators, Digital Citizenship for Adults, Sign Language for Traffic and Driver Training, ATML Search and Rescue, World Brotherhood, Human Rights for Me, and Museum without Barriers. He also serves as a consultant to international institutions such as Münchner Koch-Club Bavaria (Germany), Olektia OY  (Finland) and Amsterdam Autism Academy (Netherlands).