Abstract
This paper reports findings from a study through which we seek to understand the socio-economic and cultural context of deaf communities in a city in México in order to inform the codesign of automatic sign language processing systems. We conducted eleven interviews in two school settings with three deaf persons who are sign language users and eight hearing persons who have close relationships with deaf persons. We designed interview scripts to collect data from deaf persons, parents, and sign language teachers and interpreters. In addition to demographic data, we collected data on experience with technology for communication use as well as salient cultural aspects. Key findings from our research relate to perceptions of study participants about themselves and their context: Socio-economic aspects are consistent with previous studies; cultural traits are central for communication, denote a strong sense of identity, and highlight the role of sight and perception. We also report on reflections that were facilitated by the application of existing schemes and frameworks, which allowed us to learn about communication hardships and workarounds, as well as the most important values for the community. These findings shed light on a path we want to further investigate, which aims to understand whether variations exist in the basic needs of deaf signers with respect to the codesign of ASLP systems, independently of the countries where they live.
Highlights
Supporting the deaf1 community and conducting research involving sign language (SL) entail quite specific considerations
With this broader goal in mind, we focused on the problem of determining, whether variations exist in the basic needs of communities of deaf signers, considering the countries where they live, in the process of codesigning automatic sign language processing (ASLP) systems
One broad aim of our work has been to determine whether variations exist in the basic needs of communities of deaf signers depending on the countries where they live, considering the contexts of deaf communities in Mexico and Brazil
Summary
Supporting the deaf community and conducting research involving sign language (SL) entail quite specific considerations. We raised a few challenges, including some in technical and assistive technology systems (e.g., large public SL database, recognition, classification and data extraction algorithms); linguistics (e.g., SL specific grammar, classifiers communication, domain specific jargon, regionalisms); and human and context aspects (e.g., diversity within deaf culture, cultural aspects within a community, a country and among different countries, educational background). These challenges place our research on SL in a multidisciplinary scenario, in which we are interested in investigating human and context issues intrinsic to the codesign of automatic sign language processing (ASLP) systems. We consider that these systems have a broader perspective as a universal design
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