Abstract
In this paper, we touch upon the requirement for accessibility via Sign Language as regards dynamic composition and exchange of new content in the context of natural language-based human interaction, and also the accessibility of web services and electronic content in written text by deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. In this framework, one key issue remains the option for composition of signed “text”, along with the ability for the reuse of pre-existing signed “text” by exploiting basic editing facilities similar to those available for written text that serve vocal language representation. An equally critical related issue is accessibility of vocal language text by born or early deaf signers, as well as the use of web-based facilities via Sign Language-supported interfaces, taking into account that the majority of native signers present limited reading skills. It is, thus, demonstrated how Sign Language technologies and resources may be integrated in human-centered applications, enabling web services and content accessibility in the education and an everyday communication context, in order to facilitate integration of signer populations in a societal environment that is strongly defined by smart life style conditions. This potential is also demonstrated by end-user-evaluation results.
Highlights
The development of Web 2.0 technologies has made the WWW a rich source of information to be exploited in business, in all levels of education, and in various communication situations as in the cases of e-Health, e-Commerce, and e-Government
In the course of its implementation, SiS-Builder was enriched with a number of functionalities that provide a complete environment for creating, editing, maintaining, and testing sign language (SL) lexical resources, appropriately annotated for sign synthesis and animation
The tool provides a graphical user interface (GUI), via which users can automatically create SiGML scripts to be used by the University of East Anglia (UEA) avatar animation engine, either by entering HamNoSys strings [12,13] of signs already stored in a properly coded lexical database, or by creating HamNoSys-annotated lemmas online, using the relevant SiS-Builder function (Figure 5)
Summary
The development of Web 2.0 technologies has made the WWW a rich source of information to be exploited in business, in all levels of education, and in various communication situations as in the cases of e-Health, e-Commerce, and e-Government. Accessibility of electronic content by Technologies 2018, 6, x FOR PEER REVIEW deaf and HoH WWW users remains crucially dependent on the possibility to acquire information that can be occasions presented in in the theirliterature native SL,it from the vast amountsthat of text sources being constantly uploaded. Crucial is the ability to create new electronic content that can enable dynamic message significant difficulty when they need to access a written text (indicatively listing [1], [2] and [3]). Signing making Web 2.0 accessible for SL users by allowing interactions in SL via the incorporation of avatar performance still remains challenging task withinon theavailability domain of of SLSL [8,9], it real-time These atechnologies are based monolingual and cannot be denied that synthetic give deaf user the freedom create and new bilingual/multilingual
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