Jorge Toro

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.

Fostering Better Deaf/Hearing Communication through a Novel Mobile App for Fingerspelling

Fingerspelling is a critical communication of sign language used not only by deaf children but also by parents, teachers and interpreters who support them. The recognition of fingerspelling is particularly difficult for sign language learners and support software for practice is particularly limited due to the fluid and natural way that signers will spell with their hands. Any software tool that helps people practice reading fingerspelling must be natural enough to represent the fluidity of this motion while at the same time being flexible enough to spell any list of words in the target language in any order.

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.