Jerry Schnepp

Improving deaf accessibility in remote usability testing

For studies involving Deaf participants in United States, remote usability testing has several potential advantages over face-to-face testing, including convenience, lower cost and the ability to recruit participants from diverse geographic regions. However, current technologies force Deaf participants to use English instead of their preferred language, which is American Sign Language (ASL). A new remote testing technology allows researchers to conduct studies exclusively in ASL at a lower cost than face-to-face testing. The technology design facilitates open-ended questions and is reconfigurable for use in a variety of studies. Results from usability tests of the tool are encouraging and a fullscale study is underway to compare this approach to face-to-face testing.

Combining emotion and facial nonmanual signals in synthesized american sign language

Translating from English to American Sign Language (ASL) requires an avatar to display synthesized ASL. Essential to the language are nonmanual signals that appear on the face. Previous avatars were hampered by an inability to portray emotion and facial nonmanual signals that occur at the same time. A new animation system addresses this challenge. Animations produced by the new system were tested with 40 members of the Deaf community in the United States. For each animation, participants were able to identify both nonmanual signals and emotional states. Co-occurring question nonmanuals and affect information were distinguishable, which is particularly striking because the two processes can move an avatars brows in opposing directions.

Synthesizing the finger alphabet of Swiss German Sign Language and evaluating the comprehensibility of the resulting animations

This paper reports on work in synthesizing the finger alphabet of Swiss German Sign Language (Deutschschweizerische Gebardensprache, DSGS) asafirst step towards afingerspelling learning tool for this language. Sign language synthesis is an instance of automatic sign language processing, which in turn forms part of natural language processing (NLP). The contribution of this paper is twofold: Firstly, the process of creating a set of hand postures and transitions for the DSGS finger alphabet is explained, and secondly, the results of a study assessing the comprehensibility of the resulting animations are reported. The comprehension rate of the signing avatar was highly satisfactory at 90.06%.

An automated technique for real-time production of lifelike animations of American Sign Language

Generating sentences from a library of signs implemented through a sparse set of key frames derived from the segmental structure of a phonetic model of ASL has the advantage of flexibility and efficiency, but lacks the lifelike detail of motion capture. These difficulties are compounded when faced with real-time generation and display. This paper describes a technique for automatically adding realism without the expense of manually animating the requisite detail. The new technique layers transparently over and modifies the primary motions dictated by the segmental model and does so with very little computational cost, enabling real-time production and display. The paper also discusses avatar optimizations that can lower the rendering overhead in real-time displays.

Promoting Better Deaf/Hearing Communication Through an Improved Interaction Design for Fingerspelling Practice

Fingerspelling is a manual system used by many signers for producing letters of a written alphabet to spell words from a spoken language. It can function as a link between signed and spoken languages. Fingerspelling is a vital skill for ASL/English interpreters, parents and teachers of deaf children as well as providers of deaf social services. Unfortunately fingerspelling reception can be a particularly difficult skill for hearing adults to acquire. One of the contributing factors to this situation is a lack of adequate technology to facilitate self-study. This paper describes new efforts to create a practice tool that more realistically simulates the use of fingerspelling in the real world.

Developing an Adaptive Mobile Platform in Family Medicine Field Experiences: User Perceptions

EASEL (education through application-supported experiential learning) is a platform designed to provide just-in-time content and reflection opportunities to students during field experiences, such as interviews or field labs, conducted as part of the workload in a course. This study was conducted in area of family medicine education at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. EASEL allows instructors and students flexibility to engage with course content based on the time of day and the location of each student conducting field work by providing access to questions and content before, during, and after a targeted field experience. In this study, three cohorts of family medicine students (N = 20) interviewed either a health care professional or a patient. Students used EASEL to facilitate and support their experience in the field. This study examined the student perceptions of EASEL. The data indicated instructive information on the usability of the EASEL platform and aided developers in considering future technologies to use as a part of the platform.

Special issue: recent advances in sign language translation and avatar technology

Deafness is not simply a barrier of sound, but also a barrier of language. Those born deaf do not use spoken (or written) language as their primary language, but prefer to use sign language instead [1]. This group faces barriers to education, social services, and employment opportunities because the written form as well as the voiced form of spoken languages is inaccessible [2–5]. Sign language translation and avatar technology has the potential for creating better access to both forms of spoken language. This collected volume is based on presentations given at the symposium ‘‘Sign Language Translation and Avatar Technology (SLTAT),’’ held in October 2013 at DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA. These articles represent many of the major areas of effort currently being undertaken by researchers in this discipline. These include machine translation, improved methods for capturing and editing of signed corpora for generating animation, systems for improved display of signed animation, and evaluation of signing produced via avatar display.

Just Give Me a Hint! An Alternative Testing Approach for Simultaneous Assessment and Learning

The Millennial generation has grown up using computers as an essential part of their daily activities. Educators have successfully adapted formative assessments by incorporating Internet resources, gamification and pervasive technology to meet the needs of these students. However, summative assessments have changed very little. Point Barter is an online testing system that incorporates game-like features to equitably assist students in answering test questions. It allows students to dynamically trade test points for hints about the correct answer. This paper presents the results of a study that evaluated Point Barter with two sections of the same course. One section used Point Barter throughout a semester while the other used the standard testing system. Upon completion of the course, all participants took a standardized cumulative final exam. The experimental group scored significantly higher than the control group, indicating that using Point Barter throughout the semester may have led to increased learning.