sign language

Developers eager to be among the first to create applications for Leap Motion's new gesture control system think it could be used to auto-translate sign language.

That was among the details the company released this morning about the initial round of requests from developers to design tools that work with the Leap -- technology that lets users control what's on their computers with hundredth of a millimeter accuracy with nothing more than their fingers or their hands.

The San Francisco company said that in the two months since pulling back the wraps on the Leap, more than 26,… Read more

We all know what it's like to send a text message or e-mail whose tone is completely misinterpreted. A series of additional messages to better explain ourselves ensues and the efficiency of the original message is long gone.

That's one reason engineers at the University of Washington are testing a tool called MobileASL that uses motion detection to identify American Sign Language and transmit images over U.S. cell networks. Sometimes, words alone just don't cut it.

"Sometimes with texting, people will be confused about what it really means," says Tong Song, a Chinese national who is studying at Gallaudet University, a school for the deaf in Washington, D.C., and participating in UW's summer pilot test. "With the MobileASL, phone people can see each other eye to eye, face to face, and really have better understanding."

Eve Riskin, a UW professor of electrical engineering, says the MobileASL team's study of 11 students is the first to examine how deaf and hearing-impaired people in the U.S. use mobile video phones. The researchers plan to launch a larger field study this winter.

The engineers are now working to optimize compressed video signals for sign language, increasing the quality of the images around the face and hands to reduce the data rate to 30 kilobytes per second. To minimize the amount of battery power, the phones employ motion sensors to determine whether sign language is being used.… Read more

The trajectory of the "Danny the Dragon Meets Jimmy" story was fairly standard, as far as modern stories go. First, it was an illustrated book. Then a DVD. Then iStoryTime developed it as an iPhone app.

But it went a step further. As of last week, the award-winning children's book by Tina Turbin and illustrated by Aija Jasuna is the first to be available as an iPad app with a sign language mode.

"We are extremely proud to release the first-ever children's book app for the deaf community," says iStoryTime co-founder Woody Sears. "… Read more

A number of materials, including textbooks, videotapes, and software, teach sign language. But Hitachi researcher Hirohiko Sagawa and his cohorts see limitations with those methods. They have created a prototype model of a mobile phone that displays Japanese sign language movements via 3D animation. Users can shift the viewing angles and enlarge animated images to get a more well-rounded sense of what the gestures entail.

In the photo above, Sagawa shows off the prototype at the Japanese electronics giant's advanced technology fair in Tokyo on Thursday.

There may come a day when telling someone to "talk to the hand" will be socially acceptable.

Designers Bhargav Bhat, Hemant Sikaria, and Priya Narasimhan are working on a prototype called "HandTalk," which essentially is a phone for the hearing impaired. This wearable glove device detects the motions and gestures used in sign language, translates them into audio, then plays it all back on a cell phone or mobile device.

Recently showcased at the Meeting Of The Minds expo at Carnegie Mellon University Center, the mobile software app can reportedly detect 32 words to date--a mere … Read more

This is why we love technology. Sure, a lot of gadgets are made just for fashion, fetish or one-upsmanship, but every once in awhile something of socially redeeming value comes along. In this case, it's sign language on mobile phones.

Taking a generational leap beyond text messaging, the University of Washington's "MobileASL" project is working on video-compression technology that would improve transmission quality so that American Sign Language gestures would be recognizable on cell phones. "It uses skin-detection algorithms to zoom in on those specific areas in the video that contain essential movements used to … Read more