Speech For The Deaf

I am linus's ho writes "CNN is running a story about gloves which transelate sign language into audble speach, in a stephen hawking type mannor, only, i suppose, much different. The article can be found here"

Comments

never gonna work

[elmegil]

My wife is a sign language interpreter, so I have some experience from which to speak.

Anyone who's spent any time around those who speak ASL or any other sign language as their primary language know that there's a hell of a lot more to sign language than the hands. It's also body posture, relative positions of the hands, and especially facial expressions. The main distinguishment between a question and a statement, for example, is all in head posture and facial expression. Another thing that this doesn't address is what's known as classifiers, where the signing person identifies some hand shape and/or position in space as a particular object/person and then uses that same shape and space in the way we would use a pronoun. This is not something I can see software picking up from mere gloves. (BTW all of this is hyper-simplified both by the fact that I myself do not know ASL and by the fact that I'm not discussing this in an ASL-technical forum).

Bottom line: it may have some limited utility in some very special conditions, but it will not simply allow a deaf person to put on a pair of gloves and have an instant voice.

Re:Gloves that improve spelling?

[colmore]

Commenting on posters' spelling = pompous.

Commenting on editors' spelling = legitimate expectation of quality from a service that claims to be "news."

It's silly to expect random people commenting as fast as they can in order to deal with a stupid default "oldest post first" system to be paragons of grammar and spelling. You're lucky to understand them at all.

I don't think it's too much to ask that Slashdot editors, or people taking the time to post stories, run submissions at least through a half-decent spell check.

RIght.

[truefluke]

I sign. And I'm hearing impaired. And there is no possible way that this thing would be able to keep up with my signing speed once I'm in the 'zone', or in deep, conceptual sign.

If it is a word for word thing, then it will sound like broken English, and then when I do idiomatic sign, just like speaking idiomatic english, you have to infer the context to get the meaning.

Heh. this is ridculous. Why people just don't learn sign is beyond me.

I don't think this is that helpful at this point.

[LupusUF]

It is good that people are thinking about how to help the deaf, I just don't see this as all that useful. I am amazed that they have gotten up to 95% accuracy...though I suspect that this is with someone who went through a long training with the device, and they do mention that it has to be calibrated...a lot like the speech to text programs that never really caught on.

I think the annoyances would outweigh the benefits. They would be a pain to deal with...you would constantly have to turn them on and off so they don't start speaking when you are simply using your hands to say, pick something up. They would likely be very easy to break...your hands put things through a lot of stress.

Plus, a hearing person who is motivated can communicate with a deaf person if they put forth any effort. My high school had a program for deaf people, so I saw many of them around school...and never had a problem communicating with them. We did not use proper sign language like they used with each other, but a mix between gestures that we could all figure out, and lip reading. I have run into several of them since then and did not have any trouble communicating without pen or paper. My guess is many of them would rather communicate in this way, than deal with a flawed system that is a pain to use.

That being said...it is good that research is being done on the topic, because it not only opens people's eyes to the hassles that the deaf must go through...but it opens up a possibility where maybe in the future a system like this could be worked out that is more effective...though I think it would be very hard to do, perhaps it would not be impossible.

Re:The Deaf should learn to speak with their mouth

[leob]

There is no reason, with lots of hard work and patience that a deaf people (especially starting as young childern) cannot learn to speak properly using their voice and mouth.

There is no reason gay people cannot learn (with lots of hard work, especially starting as young children) to pretend to enjoy copulating with the opposite sex.

The whole "Deaf Culture" movement that encourages deaf people to make themselves distinct (by not speaking or reading lips) from the "Hearing" people is terrible.

The whole "gay culture" movement that encourages gay people to make themselves distinct (by not copulating with the opposite sex) from the "straight" people is terrible.

If a deaf person can learn to speak and read lips they can get along extremely well, almost unnoticed in everyday life.

If a gay person can learn to pretend to enjoy copulating with the opposite sex they can get along extremely well, almost unnoticed in everyday life.

Actually, there is a reason for neither of the two happening: the gains (of being almost unnoticed in everyday life) do not outweigh the sacrifices (hard work and patience learning how to do something extremely discomforting, especially starting as young children).

Where this will come in handy...

[Ironica]

Everyone's going on about all the times this won't be useful... but think about when it will be.

- Asking for directions on a streetcorner
- Finding out bus fare
- Ordering dinner in a restaurant
- Picking up the phone when no one else is around

And so on. There are a ton of mundane things that will be very hard for a deaf person to do without the assistance of a hearing person, but might be pretty important. A device like this might make it much, much easier and safer for a deaf person to travel alone... like I did, traveling around Europe with my crappy little Radio Shack five-language translator. Yeah, I couldn't have deep philosophical conversations in French, German or Italian (Spanish I do ok in on my own), but I could get food and a hotel room.