Sign Language Research Articles

The Optimization of Numerical Algorithm Parameters with a Genetic Algorithm to Animate Letters of the Sign Alphabet

At present, the development of animation-based works for human–computer interaction applications has increased. To generate animations, actions are pre-recorded and animation flows are configured. In this research, from two images of letters of the sign language alphabet, intermediate frames were generated using a numerical traced algorithm based on homotopy. The parameters of a homotopy curve were optimized with a genetic algorithm to generate intermediate frames. In the experiments performed, sequences where a person executes pairs of letters in sign language were recorded and animations of the same pairs of letters were generated with the proposed method. Subsequently, the similarity of the real sequences to the animations was measured using Dynamic Time Wrapping. The results obtained show that the images obtained are consistent with their execution by a person. Animation files between sign pairs were created from sign images, with each file weighing an average of 18.3 KB. By having sequences between pairs of letters it is possible to animate words and sentences. The animations generated by this homotopy-based animation method optimized with a genetic algorithm can be used in various deaf interaction applications to provide assistance. From several pairs of letters a file base was generated using the animations between pairs of letters; with these files you can create animations of words and sentences.

Evaluating Oral Hygiene and Caries Prevalence among Deaf and Hard of Hearing Orphans at Karya Murni Orphanage in Medan

Access to equal oral health attention is the right of all human beings, including orphan children with hearing loss or deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) conditions. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the correlation between the level of oral hygiene and caries indexing among the sub-population of DHH orphans receiving special care at Karya Murni orphanage in Medan City. A cross-sectional design was used with non-probability sampling to select 58 orphans willing to engage in the Oral Hygiene Index-Simplified (OHI-S) and mean of Decayed, Missing, and Filled Permanent Teeth (DMFT) assessment during dental and oral cavity screening after participating in counseling activities. Furthermore, the results showed a positive correlation (p=0.007) between oral hygiene and caries, suggesting that OHI-S impacted DMFT by approximately 34.9%, with both index scores presenting proportional equivalence. There is a need to conduct regular dental health monitoring along with education on visual methods and sign language among DHH orphans. Additionally, DHH orphan caregivers should actively engage in enhancing personal health behaviors, particularly to maintain oral and dental health.

Impact of information provision on tsunami evacuation behavior of residents and international tourists in Japan

Effective disaster management can help mitigate both human and financial damage. However, the absence of appropriate disaster preparedness and management efforts can increase the vulnerability of international tourists to natural disasters. International tourists differ from residents and local tourists in various ways, including limited knowledge of disasters and disaster responses, use of different languages, limited access to signs, and shelter locations and evacuation routes. This study developed an agent-based evacuation model to determine the differences in evacuation behaviors among international tourists, residents, and local tourists during a tsunami. Further, it clarified the impact of both soft and hard countermeasures such as information provision and shelter capacity expansion. Our case study was conducted in the Minato Bay area in Osaka, Japan. The simulation results revealed disparities in the evacuation behaviors between international tourists and residents in the arrival times at shelters. The enhanced sign accessibility and provision of signs in multiple languages significantly reduced the arrival time of international tourists at shelters. Consequently, it is necessary to improve disaster management plans that ensure information provision in multiple languages and the establishment of temporary shelters near tourism spots to support international tourists during disaster evacuation.

Space, body and presence

Abstract The trend towards remote interpreting has caused a radical change for interpreters worldwide, one that has shifted their workplace from well-known physical spaces to new digital spaces. Research to date has documented specific settings, language combinations and/or interpreting modes, and it has usually focused on certain forms of remote interpreting (e.g., video remote interpreting, video relay service). The combinations of different characteristics and factors in remote interpreting are almost infinite, however, and single terms fail to depict and cover all possible variations. This article proposes an analytical framework that uses conceptualisations of space, body and presence to analyse interpreting assignments in digital spaces, regardless of language combination, setting and mode. Two examples are used to illustrate the application of this framework: a hybrid conference and a meeting in virtual reality (VR), both of them involving sign language interpreting. The use of VR has undergone a substantial increase in the past few years, having developed rapidly. It is therefore possible that future interpreting assignments might take place in this new digital space. The application of these two scenarios shows that the analytical framework can be used both to reflect on past and to anticipate future assignments.

Gesture Recognition of Filipino Sign Language Using Convolutional and Long Short-Term Memory Deep Neural Networks

In response to the recent formalization of Filipino Sign Language (FSL) and the lack of comprehensive studies, this paper introduces a real-time FSL gesture recognition system. Unlike existing systems, which are often limited to static signs and asynchronous recognition, it offers dynamic gesture capturing and recognition of 10 common expressions and five transactional inquiries. To this end, the system sequentially employs cropping, contrast adjustment, grayscale conversion, resizing, and normalization of input image streams. These steps serve to extract the region of interest, reduce the computational load, ensure uniform input size, and maintain consistent pixel value distribution. Subsequently, a Convolutional Neural Network and Long-Short Term Memory (CNN-LSTM) model was employed to recognize nuances of real-time FSL gestures. The results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed technique over existing FSL recognition systems, achieving an impressive average accuracy, recall, and precision rate of 98%, marking an 11.3% improvement in accuracy. Furthermore, this article also explores lightweight conversion methods, including post-quantization and quantization-aware training, to facilitate the deployment of the model on resource-constrained platforms. The lightweight models show a significant reduction in model size and memory utilization with respect to the base model when executed in a Raspberry Pi minicomputer. Lastly, the lightweight model trained with the quantization-aware technique (99%) outperforms the post-quantization approach (97%), showing a notable 2% improvement in accuracy.

The Existence of Sign Language Interpreters in Assisting Deaf Individuals in the Creation of Notarial Deeds

The Existence of Sign Language Interpreters in Assisting Deaf Individuals in the Creation of Notarial Deeds

Evaluating Instructional Package for Teaching Mathematics for the Hearing-impaired Students

This study evaluated a package for teaching algebra with sign language video to students with hearing difficulties within Oyo State, Nigeria. Seventy-four participants, comprising 37 males and 37 females, were involved in the pre-test-post-test design to assess the effectiveness of such a package. At the Federal College of Education (Special), Oyo, the reliability test returned an alpha value of 0.812 and 0.670, in which items used had very strong internal consistency among 26 hearing-impaired Economics students. The collection of data was done in three different stages: initial collation of resources, conducting a pre-test, and subsequently after six weeks, a post-test evaluation. The results show that the package strongly improved students' performances, with females doing better than males, as was confirmed by a statistically significant p-value (<0.05). It becomes obvious that the video package efficiently enriches comprehension in algebra and thus supports individual learning among students to help them be able to solve problems on their own. The findings suggest the special role that visual aids can play in the education of students with special needs. The results further suggest that video packages can be considered surrogate teachers that inculcate positive attitudes toward learning among hearing-impaired students. As an instructional strategy, this should, when implemented, lead to improved students' profile performance and a better understanding of mathematical concepts among Nigerian Colleges of Education.

Attention-Based BiGRU Model for Real-time Sign Language Translation Applications

Sign language applications provide an important key to solving communication problems for deaf community and normal hearing people. Current research problem usually focuses on improving communication access between deaf and hearing people. In this study, we consider real-time communication context from deaf to hearing people, and thus we propose an attention-based bidirectional gated recurrent unit (A-BiGRU) model which demonstrates on trading-off among an precision performance, and computational efficiency which includes training time, testing time, and system resources on extended the American Sign Language Gloss (E-ASLG-PC12) dataset. The results shown that our proposal has a significant performance improvement in term of training time, testing time, system resources, comparing to attentionbased bidirectional long-short term memory (A-BiLSTM), and the other moderns of sequence to sequence models. Moreover, precision performance of our proposal model achieve closer to that of the complex architecture, A-BiLSTM. Thus, we believe that our proposed model is a suitable and potential candidate for real-time translation applications as well as and lower computational devices when they solve the communication problems from deaf to normal hearing people direction. Keywords– computational efficiency (CE), attention-based bidirectional gated recurrent unit (A-BiGRU), sign language translation applications (SLTA).

Pembelajaran Seni Tari Pada Anak Berkebutuhan Khusus Di SLB Negeri Prabumulih

This research aims to describe dance learning for children with special needs at the Prabumulih State Special School. The method in this research uses a qualitative descriptive method with triangulation data collection techniques from three data sources, namely interview observation and documentation. The results of this research show that dance learning at Prabumulih State Special School uses a therapeutic learning system using sign language in the form of codes or calculations from the teacher. Learning dance for children with special needs at Prabumulih State Special School can develop students' motor, sensory, communication and cognitive systems. This learning provides a platform for students with special needs to develop themselves so that they are useful in everyday life

Development of Indonesian Association of People with Disabilities (PPDI) Volunteers Based on Digital Applications to Increase Deaf Interaction

Background: Effective communication is essential for everyone, but it can be especially difficult for those who are deaf or hard of hearing. This can lead to isolation and hinder their ability to express themselves. Unfortunately, many people, including volunteers from PPDI North Sumatra, lack sign language skills, creating a communication barrier with the deaf community. Contribution: This activity aims to develop and assist Regional Representative Council PPDI North Sumatra volunteers to increase interaction with the deaf at Regional Representative Council PPDI North Sumatra Method: PPDI volunteers participated in program socialization, learned PIKU application features, and received training on its use. Results: The PIKU program yielded positive outcomes. Volunteer participation was enthusiastic, and interaction with the deaf community increased. The app's free accessibility, user-friendly interface, and clear visuals facilitated communication. Conclusion: The PIKU program, with its communication-assistive technology, effectively improved interaction between PPDI volunteers and the deaf community in North Sumatra. This highlights the potential of technology to break down communication barriers and foster inclusivity

Adversarial autoencoder for continuous sign language recognition

Adversarial autoencoder for continuous sign language recognition

Neurocognitive outcomes in young adults with cochlear implants: The role of early language access and crossmodal plasticity

Many children with profound hearing loss have received cochlear implants (CI) to help restore some sense of hearing. There is, however, limited research on long-term neurocognitive outcomes in young adults who have grown up hearing through a CI. This study compared the cognitive outcomes of early-implanted (n = 20) and late-implanted (n = 21) young adult CI users, and typically hearing (TH) controls (n=56), all of whom were enrolled in college. Cognitive fluidity, nonverbal intelligence, and American Sign Language (ASL) comprehension were assessed, revealing no significant differences in cognition and nonverbal intelligence between the early and late-implanted groups. However, there was a difference in ASL comprehension, with the late-implanted group having significantly higher ASL comprehension. Although young adult CI users showed significantly lower scores in a working memory and processing speed task than TH age-matched controls, there were no significant differences in tasks involving executive function shifting, inhibitory control, and episodic memory between young adult CI and young adult TH participants. In an exploratory analysis of a subset of CI participants (n = 17) in whom we were able to examine crossmodal plasticity, we saw greater evidence of crossmodal recruitment from the visual system in late-implanted compared with early-implanted CI young adults. However, cortical visual evoked potential latency biomarkers of crossmodal plasticity were not correlated with cognitive measures or ASL comprehension. The results suggest that in the late-implanted CI users, early access to sign language may have served as a scaffold for appropriate cognitive development, while in the early-implanted group early access to oral language benefited cognitive development. Furthermore, our results suggest that the persistence of crossmodal neuroplasticity into adulthood does not necessarily impact cognitive development. In conclusion, early access to language – spoken or signed – may be important for cognitive development, with no observable effect of crossmodal plasticity on cognitive outcomes.

Advancements and Challenges in Hand Gesture Recognition: A Comprehensive Review

Hand gesture recognition is a quickly developing field with many uses in human-computer interaction, sign language recognition, virtual reality, gaming, and robotics. This paper reviews different ways to model hands, such as vision-based, sensor-based, and data glove-based techniques. It emphasizes the importance of accurate hand modeling and feature extraction for capturing and analyzing gestures. Key features like motion, depth, color, shape, and pixel values and their relevance in gesture recognition are discussed. Challenges faced in hand gesture recognition include lighting variations, complex backgrounds, noise, and real-time performance. Machine learning algorithms are used to classify and recognize gestures based on extracted features. The paper emphasizes the need for further research and advancements to improve hand gesture recognition systems' robustness, accuracy, and usability. This review offers valuable insights into the current state of hand gesture recognition, its applications, and its potential to revolutionize human-computer interaction and enable natural and intuitive interactions between humans and machines. In simpler terms, hand gesture recognition is a way for computers to understand what people are saying with their hands. It has many potential applications, such as allowing people to control computers without touching them or helping people with disabilities communicate. The paper reviews different ways to develop hand gesture recognition systems and discusses the challenges and opportunities in this area.

Designing deaf spaces: education, hygiene, and citizenship in nineteenth-century France

ABSTRACT This article examines the changing architectural environments of deaf education in the nineteenth century, taking the national institutes in Paris and Bordeaux as its main focus. Founded in the late eighteenth century and initially housed in government-expropriated properties, both schools underwent comprehensive renovation and reconstruction projects in the nineteenth century to emerge as modern educational spaces. Although these projects remain overlooked in the history of modern architecture, they were closely tied to contemporary discourses on education, hygiene, and citizenship. The renovation of the Paris Institute for Deaf-Mutes during the 1820s–30s engaged pressing questions about hygiene and social progress in the postrevolutionary era of national reconstruction. The architectural transformation of the Bordeaux Institute for Deaf-Mute Girls from the 1860s not only reflected the changing pedagogical focus from sign language to oralism; it was also imbricated in broader debates about laïcité and educational standardisation as France transitioned from empire to republic. Far from being marginal, these institutions functioned as key sites for working through notions of citizenship and national identity. Their histories reveal how architectural and material frameworks could serve to impose ideology on the one hand, and provide important grounds for the formation of a minority community on the other.

Metalinguistic Discourse in an Emerging Sign Language

In this paper, I explore metalinguistic discourse in Zinacantec Family Homesign (‘Z sign’), an emergent sign language developed by three deaf siblings and their hearing family members. In particular, I examine how metalinguistic discourse unfolds between a hearing Z signer and various members of her family—including her deaf siblings, her elderly hearing father, and her young hearing son. I do so via a close examination of several snippets of conversation in which the Z signers talk about the “right” way to sign, paying close attention to how they mobilize various semiotic devices, including manual signs, eye gaze, facial expressions, and speech. I aim to understand not only the formal components of metalinguistic discourse in Z sign but also how it functions as a form of social action in this small linguistic community. How do members of this family position themselves and others as (in)competent, (non-)authoritative signers in light of existing social divisions among them? How do they reinforce or challenge those social divisions through metalinguistic discourse? How might metalinguistic discourse contribute to the propagation of emergent linguistic norms throughout the family? I find that a recurrent device for enacting metalinguistic critique among the Z signers is the partial re-production and transformation of others’ utterances and other visible actions, manifested in a way that exploits the availability of multiple, semi-independent manual and non-manual articulators in the visual modality.

Enhancing communication: Deep learning for Arabic sign language translation

Abstract This study explores the field of sign language recognition through machine learning, focusing on the development and comparative evaluation of various algorithms designed to interpret sign language. With the prevalence of hearing impairment affecting millions globally, efficient sign language recognition systems are increasingly critical for enhancing communication for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. We review several studies, showcasing algorithms with accuracies ranging from 63.5 to 99.6%. Building on these works, we introduce a novel algorithm that has been rigorously tested and has demonstrated a perfect accuracy of 99.7%. Our proposed algorithm utilizes a sophisticated convolutional neural network architecture that outperforms existing models. This work details the methodology of the proposed system, which includes preprocessing, feature extraction, and a multi-layered CNN approach. The remarkable performance of our algorithm sets a new benchmark in the field and suggests significant potential for real-world application in assistive technologies. We conclude by discussing the impact of these findings and propose directions for future research to further improve the accessibility and effectiveness of sign language recognition systems.

Changing language hierarchies and ideologies in New Zealand dual language picturebooks: 1973-2020

Aotearoa New Zealand is a multilingual country with three official languages, Te Reo Māori and New Zealand Sign Language, and English. The presence of Māori and English in picturebooks published in New Zealand between 1973 and 2020 offers a method of exploring and documenting the changing language hierarchies and ideologies across a 47-year period. This is of particular importance because of the contribution of children’s literature to developing language attitudes in child and adult readers. In this article, a sociolinguistic lens called Linguistic Landscape is used to analyse a sample of seven picturebooks, showing how picturebooks reflect language beliefs and attitudes to official yet minority languages in an English-dominant society. The picturebooks are analysed in terms of the relative space and dominance afforded each language. Links to language status in law and education are examined exploring the potential of picturebooks as a source for the study of changing language hierarchies and ideologies.

Romanticism and Deaf Justice

ABSTRACT Thomas Holcroft’s Deaf and Dumb (1801), an adaptation of J. N. Bouilly’s L’Abbé de L’Épée (1799), is a foundational story for deaf justice that models educational access as a route to self-determination for deaf people. Based on the real story of the Comte de Solar, Bouilly’s play, and its many translations, recounts the story of an abandoned deaf child who is rescued by the Abbé, taught sign language and restored to his family. This article follows the progress of the tale as it is reworked by deaf and hearing writers, circulating extensively in many genres on both sides of the Atlantic over the next two hundred years. Holcroft’s version is closely tied to fundraising for deaf schools, and is an important example of transatlantic exchange between deaf Anglophone and Francophone worlds. Although Holcroft’s play was embraced by pioneer deaf educators, such as Laurent Clerc, its sentimentality has proved to be problematic, as this article will also explore. The Solar story is, nevertheless, significant for the attention it pays to a number of deaf justice issues: the rights to family life and name; property ownership and inheritance; education and literacy; access to communication and community; and legal protections.

Legal Assistance for Deaf: Role of Indian Sign Language Digital Library

The digital library is the most widely used source of legal information. However, libraries in India do not fulfill their obligation to provide the deaf population with the necessary legal information and support. Libraries need to investigate different kinds of assistive technology, which could be a beneficial way to give the deaf population access to important legal information resources and help them deal with the problem. This article addresses the legal issues and challenges faced by the deaf population, the role of Indian sign language (ISL) interpreters in providing legal assistance, and the disadvantages of ISL interpreters in the legal system when providing legal services to the deaf population. To overcome the issues and challenges, this article focuses on the design and development of the ISL Legal Digital Library to support the deaf and the legal system.

A New Method for Documenting Sign Language Productions in Schools

Purpose: There are well-established guidelines for the recording, transcription, and analysis of spontaneous oral language samples by researchers, educators, and speech pathologists. In contrast, there is presently no consensus regarding methods for the written documentation of sign language samples. The Handshape Analysis Recording Tool (HART) is an innovative method for documenting and analyzing word level samples of signed languages in real time. Fluent sign language users can document the expressive sign productions of children to gather data on sign use and accuracy. Method: The HART was developed to document children's productions in Australian Sign Language (Auslan) in a bilingual–bicultural educational program for the Deaf in Australia. This written method was piloted with a group of fluent signing Deaf educational staff in 2014–2016, then used in 2022–2023 with a group of fluent signing professionals to examine inter- and intrarater reliability when coding parameters of sign accuracy. Results: Interrater reliability measured by Gwet's Agreement Coefficient, was “good” to “very good” across the four phonological parameters that are components of every sign: location, movement, handshape, and orientation. Conclusions: The findings of this study indicate that the HART can be a reliable tool for coding the accuracy of location, orientation, movement, and handshape parameters of Auslan phonology when used by professionals fluent in Auslan. The HART can be utilized with any sign language to gather word level sign language samples in a written form and document the phonological accuracy of signed productions.