A Machine Learning-Based Ambiguous Alphabet Recognition for Indonesian Sign Language System (SIBI)

Looking across the Hearing Line?: Exploring Young Deaf People’s Use of Web 2.0

Among the Al-Sayyid Arab-Bedouin, the use of an indigenous sign language is widespread and provides the foundation of a signing community shared by hearing and deaf people. Cases with comparable high incidences of deafness have in recent years stimulated debates in diverse academic disciplines. Lacking an accurate term, they are regularly referred to as “Martha's Vineyard situations” and have often been oversimplified and romanticized. This article provides an in-depth analysis of a Bedouin shared-signing community and advocates closer investigation of both facilitating and disabling social practices, which would also allow better examination of comparable cases. This article concentrates on the shared use of sign language, the asymmetry it entails, and the manifold forms of translation and mediation that take place. Whereas most hearing Al-Sayyid persons have access to both spoken and signed modes of communication, deaf people's communication remains largely restricted to the signed mode (hence, the asymmetry). However, in contrast to the common reduction of deafness to the disabling absence of speech or need for translation, deaf people's need for translation is not unusual among the Al-Sayyid; local communication patterns involve many different forms of translation between different spoken languages, written languages, discourses, and social domains. Additionally, ample translators are readily available. Moreover, the common familiarity with deaf people and sign language facilitates the production and sharing of a unique experiential knowledge, grounded in daily experiences and practices. In this context, deafness is not easily subjugated to its medical model. However, encounters with the medical and educational establishment present a series of challenges that may severely exacerbate deaf people's structure of opportunities. Finally, I consider the attempts made so far to classify comparable cases; unfortunately, these mostly attempt to classify deaf communities rather than the broader category of signing communities. I thus maintain that the term “shared signing community” most accurately captures what these cases have in common: the pervasive use of signing by both hearing and deaf.

Sign language is a common language for deaf and mute people to communicate information. In order to make deaf people watch video without barrier, video plays and sign language translation solves the problem of deaf people obtaining video information. Subtitle processing and Chinese word segmentation were adopted to find corresponding words in sign language dictionary, transcoding was sent to unity through socket mechanism, realizing the process of sign language translation driven by video subtitle. Deaf people can watch video with Chinese subtitles and see clear, smooth and natural sign language translation animation when using it. The sign language translation animation library is based on the unified, standardized and common grammar sign language. Users can easily get the information in video and gradually standardize the use of sign language. Movie sign language translation system is of special significance to the hearing impaired people to improve their quality of life and has produced practical value for social progress.

Cochlear Implants in Children: Ethics and vices by John B. Christia and Irene W. Leigh. (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 2002, 340 pp., casebound, $49.95) LIKE MANY readers of this journal, I have followed the cochlear implant controversy with a cautious and curious stance, not wanting to take sides with any level of passion. As an educator, I would welcome any technological advance that might enhance cognitive and/or linguistic development in deaf children. Months ago, I saw a segment on television about a young deaf girl who received an implant. I watched as she was playing in the yard and heard an airplane flying overhead. The thought that she was made aware of something in the environment and this may have stimulated her thinking about the world around her was quickly lost when the medical doctor and interviewer focused on how long it would be before the young girl would speak like her hearing peers. Wrong focus, I thought. Before advocating the use of such technology on a large-scale basis, I would want to see some research results showing its potential for improving the quality of life. Deaf education has a long history of armchair philosophizing about technology. Closed and open captions, the TTY, and now the Internet, for example, have all been touted in books, magazines, and journals in terms of their potential effects on learning. Yet, there is no great body of research that provides evidence of benefits beyond increased access to information for deaf and hard of hearing people. A glimpse into history also provides some understanding of why there is so much emotion attached to technological advances. Advances in voice telephony led to a ninety-year delay in access to the telephone for deaf people. Advances in adding the sound track to silent movies led to more than forty years of lost access to films. For hundreds of years, deaf people, viewed as disabled, have been treated with chemical and electrical cures, sent up for airplane dives, and subjected to a multitude of other medical fixes. Emotions have long been a part of Deaf education history. The Deaf community has long included many different types of people, and we have experienced technology's impact in different ways. The TTY, for example, eliminated the need for face-to-face communication, saving deaf people long drives to a Deaf club or to the homes of family members and friends just for personal communication. In turn, instant messaging and the Internet may be having an impact on the need for the TTY. Regardless, the TTY would never have come about without collaboration between signing and nonsigning deaf people in the National Association of the Deaf and the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf (through the organization now known as Telecommunications for the Deaf, Inc., or TDI). All the while, American Sign Language (ASL) has become recognized as a true language and is used increasingly by many deaf and hearing people. A number of universities and state education departments recognize ASL as a foreign language. As a deaf person myself, I have deaf friends who have had a range of experiences with cochlear implants. One just received an implant at the age of fifty-six and is delighted with it. So are two friends who are in their thirties. Another received hers fifteen years ago and blames the implant for migraines and frequent nausea. A fourth friend had several implants over the past ten years and does not use an implant now. It only makes me curious. I have wondered also about the range of experiences younger deaf children have with implants. While at a conference at James Madison University last fall I dropped in at the end of a presentation by a cochlear implant expert and was delighted to see him advocating continued use of sign language with implanted children. Yet I also read an article about a school established for implanted children that would not allow the use of sign language. …

Interpreters in Our Midst

PurposePeople with severe or profound hearing loss face daily communication problems mainly due to the language barrier between themselves and the hearing community. Their hearing deficiency, as well as their use of sign language, often makes it difficult for them to use and understand spoken language. Cyprus is amongst the top 5 European countries with a relatively high proportion of registered deaf people (0.12 per cent of the population: GUL, 2010). However, lack of technological and financial support to the Deaf Community of Cyprus leaves the Cypriot deaf people unsupported and marginalised. The paper aims to discuss this issue.Design/methodology/approachThis study implemented user-centred design methods to explore the communication needs and requirements of Cypriot deaf people and develop a functional prototype of a mobile app to help them to communicate more effectively with hearing people. A total of 76 deaf adults were involved in various stages of the research. This paper presents the participatory design activities (N=8) and results of usability testing (N=8).FindingsThe study found that users were completely satisfied with the mobile app and, in particular, they liked the use of Cypriot Sign Language (CSL) videos of a real person interpreting hearing people’s speech in real time and the custom onscreen keyboard to allow faster selection of text input.Originality/valueDespite advances in communication aid technologies, there is currently no technology available that supports CSL or real-time speech to sign language conversion for the deaf people of Cyprus.

Deaf theater in the United States arises out of the community of American Sign Language users. Deaf theater has existed as skits, pantomimes, and signed songs as long as deaf people have formed communities. The development of formal theater is tied to the establishment of schools for the deaf in the 19th century. The spread of deaf education led to the growth of communities centered on social interactions and entertainments in sign language, including theater. The founding of the National Theatre of the Deaf (NTD) in 1967 was a pivotal moment in the United States. NTD exposed hearing audiences to stage sign language, the capabilities of deaf actors, and the artistic possibilities inherent in the merging of deaf and hearing theater. The success of NTD led to many other deaf theater companies being established throughout the United States, creating a “golden age of Deaf theater.” In addition, opportunities to work with hearing theater companies began to open up, sometimes for only one actor, but sometimes for multiple deaf artists. This type of theater has been termed integrated or mainstreamed theater. While deaf, integrated theater, and mainstreamed theater all incorporate deaf actors and sign language, they can be distinguished on the basis of cultural content and themes, ratios of deaf or hearing people involved, and accessibility for deaf audiences. All forms of deaf theater make artistic use of sign language. The unique linguistic, poetic, and musical elements of sign language create several challenges in producing deaf theater, such as translation approaches and choices, alignment of spoken English, sign language lines, and sometimes music; language access within the world of the play; and language access for audiences. William Shakespeare’s plays present unique challenges for translation due to their highly poetic language. Five recent productions in the United States illustrate the artistic and staging aspects of deaf and integrated theater: Grey House (2023), Richard III (2022), Private Jones (2024), ISM II (2023), and Trash (2023).

Inclusive Education—A Sustainable Approach? Markku Jokinen This article is excerpted from Jokinen, M. (2016). Inclusive education—A sustainable approach? In G. A. M. De Clerck & P. V. Paul (Eds.), Sign language, sustainable development, and equal opportunities (pp. 105–117). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Full and Equal Participation Through Learning Life and Social Skills Full participation is one of the general principles in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities (CRPD) for enabling the enjoyment of human rights. This concept cuts across all issues in the Convention, and is a specific obligation of states/parties that have ratified the Convention document. Other general principles relevant to the education of deaf persons are respect for the evolving capacities of children with disabilities and respect for their right to preserve their identities. The latter is related to the linguistic and cultural identity of the deaf community stated in Articles 24(2)(b) and 30(4). Both principles are essential to full enjoyment of human rights by deaf students in educational contexts. According to Article 24, on education, learning life and social development skills facilitates full and equal participation of persons with disabilities. With respect to deaf students, facilitating the learning of a sign language, promoting the linguistic identity of the deaf community, and ensuring that education is delivered in the most appropriate languages are the measures adopted by the ratified states to enable full and equal participation. The states must also take appropriate measures to employ teachers who are qualified, at least in the use of a sign language. These measures reflect culture-sensitive approaches to guiding students in learning skills that match their personalities, needs, and ways to live as deaf persons. This is part of the CRPD's recognition of the diversity of persons with disabilities and that these individuals can and do contribute to human, social, and economic development. Using and learning sign language with and from proficient teachers provides a foundation for balanced personal, academic, and social development. Enabling deaf students to participate fully in all learning processes and respecting their linguistic and cultural identities require that educators and professionals examine possible factors in successful inclusive education based on needs of deaf students. Deaf People: A Linguistic and Cultural Group Article 24 is connected to Article 2 regarding definitions of the language and communication used in the CRPD. It is the first treaty to consider sign languages as equal to spoken languages, and thus recognizes sign languages as languages in their own right. Another important link is to Article 9, on accessibility, where it is stated that states/parties shall take measures to provide professional sign language interpreters. [End Page 70] Article 21, on freedom of expression and opinion and access to information, includes recognizing and promoting the use of sign languages. Article 30, on participation in cultural life, recreation, leisure, and sport, includes the state's obligation to recognize and support the specific cultural and linguistic identity of persons with disabilities, including sign languages and deaf culture. A perspective on deaf people as a linguistic and cultural group is strengthened through these articles (CRPD, n.d.; Kauppinen & Jokinen, 2014). This perspective should be kept in mind when one develops programs for the education of deaf people that strengthen their educational rights. There is a traditional position that only individual rights are recognized in international law, whereas linguistic rights have been perceived as having a more collective nature. For example, the development of legally binding treaties such as the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities has shown a shift toward acceptance in political and legal terms of the linguistic rights (of minorities) to education (de Varennes, cited in Phillipson, 2000). Further in-depth analysis of the minority and human rights status of deaf people from the linguistic and cultural rights perspective in relation to the CRPD and other treaties is needed to gain a better understanding of what the linguistic and cultural rights of deaf students mean in an educational context. The World Federation of the Deaf used the linguistic rights perspective and arguments during negotiations of the...

Adamorobe is a village in Ghana where the historical presence of a hereditary form of deafness resulted in a high number of deaf inhabitants. Over the centuries, a local sign language emerged, which is used between deaf and hearing people in everyday life, rendering Adamorobe into a unique place of inclusion of deaf people. However, in 1975, a law was introduced to reduce the number of deaf people in Adamorobe: deaf people cannot marry each other in order to avoid deaf offspring. In the long term, this law threatens the linguistic and cultural diversity in this village where the use of sign language is omnipresent and where deaf people are perceived as fully productive and worthy members of society. This article is structured around two sets of tensions in the village, Firstly, hearing people’s acceptance and inclusion of the deaf inhabitants, versus the wish to live in a village with no (or less) deaf people. Secondly, there is a tension between deaf people’s subjection to, and resistance against, the law, this is a tension that can be observed in the existence of relationships between deaf partners, and abortions when these unions lead to pregnancies.

Until the sixties linguists didn't show any interest in the natural language of prelingually deaf people. Generally speaking their communication system was not considered a real language comparable to any spoken language. The signs used by deaf people were taken as natural gestures. In 1880 at the Milan conference on deaf education it was decided that signs should no longer be used in the schools for the deaf and that deaf people should not be allowed to use their own communication system. Instead, the spoken language of the hearing environment should be learned. At that time deaf educators were convinced of the damaging influence on spoken language development of the use of signs. However, there is no evidence for this. On the contrary, research has shown that the use of sign language as a first language improves the communicative abilities of the deaf people, which could be the basis for learning the spoken language. Despite this resolution deaf communities continued, albeit isola-ted and not openly, to use their own communication system. In 1963 a book was published by an American linguist, William Stokoe, that changed the way in which people thought about sign language. He showed how signs can be analysed into elements comparable to phonemes in spoken language and started the lingu-istic research on grammatical aspects of American Sign Language. This research showed that sign language is indeed a 'real' language, equal to any spoken language and that deaf people should have the right to use this language. Following American research, many linguists in Europe discovered' sign languages in their countries. Even in traditionally oral countries like the Netherlands and Belgium. In this paper some grammatical aspects of sign languages are discussed.

The Deaf Way Les sourds, c'est comme ca, by Yves Delaporte (Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 2002, 398 pp. 28 . ISBN 2735109356. ISSN 0758 5888). THIS VOLUME PRESENTS an ethnographic account of signing Deaf community of France, a population traditionally known as sourd-muet, deaf-mute. For reasons that I discuss briefly in this review, use of term muet in France (and corresponding term in United States) has fallen out of popular favor. A reviewer discussing this book in English is immediately faced with question of how to translate title. At first glance, something like The Deaf, That's How It Is might seem appropriate. However, consideration of French Sign Language (LSF) sign that Delaporte translates into French as c'est comme ca suggests an alternate (American) English title. Because of a shared linguistic heritage, same sign with same meaning exists in American Sign Language (ASL). As Delaporte explains (i 13-20), LSF sign originated as third-person possessive pronoun and retained its current meaning as a new sign for pronoun evolved. In its current meaning, it is a tag for descriptions of behavior that French deaf people take as being particularly illustrative of their culture-almost always expressed in terms of its differences from culture of dominant hearing/speaking majority. In this regard, when it follows sign for it might be translated as the deaf, it's their thing. In ASL, sign retains its function as possessive pronoun as well as meaning just described in FSL, and whole phrase, beginning with sign for has been translated into English as the deaf English name and ASL sign phrase for two international festivals celebrating arts and culture of world Deaf community, sponsored by Gallaudet University. What is significant about all of this is self-definition of Deaf community according to its alterity, or otherness-its fundamental separation from hearing population within which it is immersed. The central fact of life for deaf people in industrial societies, especially people born deaf, is difficulty posed by need to communicate with hearing people. For deaf people of France and rest of Europe and perhaps to a lesser extent those of North America, this problem has been compounded since i88os by refusal of educational establishment to allow them to be educated in their own natural signed languages, accompanied by attempts to prevent use of these languages even outside classroom. DeIaporte reveals complicity of medical establishment in denial of deafness and mutism-defining them as medical problems to be overcome by prosthesis and rigid oral training, with parents avoiding use of sign language at all costs. The typical result has been a more or less complete failure of formal educational process. These restrictions are only now being eased in much of Western world, to be replaced by a new form of prosthesis, cochlear implant, seen by signing Deaf communities as a new threat to their viability. The case of cochlear implants is particularly revealing of central difference between deaf and all other cultural and linguistic groups. Less than 10 percent of deaf children have deaf parents, and perhaps 90 percent of children of deaf adults are hearing. Thus, medical and educational destinies of most deaf children are controlled by hearing parents. The language and culture, in general, are not transmitted in usual way, from parents to their children. Instead, these have been transmitted to signing deaf in educational establishments, prototypically residential schools for deaf children, although tiny minority of deaf people who come from multigenerational deaf families plays a disproportionate role in this process. The histories of Deaf communities, and especially French Deaf community, are to a great extent histories of great residential schools (see Lane 1984; Van Cleve and Crouch 1989). …

Previous articleNext article No AccessBooksThe Deaf Way Les sourds, c’est comme ça. By Yves Delaporte. Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 2002. 398 pp.David F. ArmstrongDavid F. ArmstrongSign Language Studies, Gallaudet University, 800 Florida Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20002, U.S.A. ([email protected]) 27 v 04 Search for more articles by this author Sign Language Studies, Gallaudet University, 800 Florida Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20002, U.S.A. ([email protected]) 27 v 04PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Current Anthropology Volume 45, Number 5December 2004 Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/425638 Views: 14Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Reviewed by: The Sociolinguistics of Ethiopian Sign Language: A Study of Language Use and Attitudes by Eyasu Hailu Tamene Robert Bayley (bio) The Sociolinguistics of Ethiopian Sign Language: A Study of Language Use and Attitudes by Eyasu Hailu Tamene (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2017, 175 pp., Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities Series 23, hardbound, $60.00. ISBN 978-1-944838-06-5) This volume is a welcome addition to the growing number of studies of signing communities around the world (e.g., Cooper and Rashid 2015; McCaskill et al. 2011; Pfau, Steinbach, and Woll 2012; Schembri and Lucas 2015). As is fitting for a pioneering study of Ethiopian Sign Language (EthSL), Tamene focuses on dimensions of language use, language attitudes, and services available to Deaf people throughout the country rather than on the detailed linguistic analysis that has characterized other recent studies of better known sign languages. The result is a volume that provides an overview of the linguistic resources available to Deaf people in Ethiopia and a foundation for future technical work on the linguistics of EthSL, the most commonly used sign language in the country. After a brief introductory chapter providing an overview of the structure of the book, chapter 2 summarizes sign language use and deaf education in Ethiopia. EthSL has a substantial number of users, although estimates vary widely, ranging from 250,000 (according to the World Federation of the Deaf) to 1,000,000 (according to the Ethiopian National Association of the Deaf; Simons and Fennig 2018). According to Tamene, the Ethiopian Deaf community was isolated and neglected until the arrival of missionaries from Sweden and the United States in the 1950s. In addition to preaching, the missionaries founded schools for the deaf, with the first school established in 1963. As a consequence, EthSL exhibits considerable influence from American [End Page 298] Sign Language (ASL). However, the author notes that despite the foreign influence, EthSL originated in Ethiopia. Tamene comments that older Deaf people in Addis Ababa recall regular social gatherings in Piassa, the city’s old town. Currently, although it is not one of the country’s officially recognized languages, EthSL is used as a medium of instruction in schools, in TV programs, and interpreting in parliament. The author notes that there are 290 special classes and twelve schools for Deaf children that use EthSL, located in nine different regions. In addition, although the language has not been as well studied as many of the spoken languages of the country, there is a highly productive program of research in the EthSL and Deaf Cultural Program at Addis Ababa University, with fifty bachelor’s theses completed on a variety of topics. Finally, a number of primers and dictionaries documenting the language have appeared. In the remainder of chapter 2, Tamene discusses efforts at standardization, offers an overview of EthSL use in a variety of domains, and discusses attitudes toward the language held by Deaf people themselves, as well as parents and the broader community. The chapter concludes with a discussion of a crucial question: Is EthSL one language or many? Tamene provides a preliminary analysis of data from four regions that suggest that, despite variation, EthSL is essentially one language. However, he acknowledges that the type of detailed study necessary to establish the parameters of variation has yet to be done. In chapter 3, Tamene outlines the methods of the current study. Overall, participant selection followed the methods used by Lucas, Bayley, and Valli (2001). Participants were recruited in eleven sites and included 110 Deaf signers as well as twenty-two teachers and twenty-two parents. In addition to gathering demographic data, researchers conducted interviews dealing with language use in a wide range of domains, including work, school, family, and so forth, as well as information about participants’ language skills in EthSL and spoken languages. The profiles of the different sites, as well as the discussion of the interview protocols, chapter are particularly valuable. Chapter 4 presents the results of Tamene’s study, including tables summarizing the responses to different interview topics, divided by responses from Deaf participants, parents, and students. Interestingly, the majority of participants who became deaf before the age of five...

Australian Sign Language (Auslan) is a descendant of British Sign Language and is recognized in national and state language policy statements as a community language. Estimates have varied regarding the number of deaf people who use Auslan, as have views of what the features of this use may be. These data are essential for efficient planning and distribution of interpreting, educational, vocational and other services for deaf people. The present study used a range of demographic techniques to identify the number of deaf Auslan users and to examine the settings in which sign language was used. Over 15,000 deaf users of signs were identified, with the majority using the language every day in interactions with deaf and hearing people. There was evidence of strong social and linguistic cohesion in the deaf community but no evidence that signing deaf people live in a “ghetto” where they do not communicate with hearing people. There was, however, evidence of high levels of unemployment and underemployment among deaf respondents to the study. The implications of the findings are discussed.

Should All Deaf Children Learn Sign Language?