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Sign Language Via Cell Phone
QuatumCrypto writes "A project is underway at the University of Washington to enable real-time sign language communication via cell phone. Because of the low-bandwidth wireless cell phone network, a new compression scheme is necessary to capture only the bare essential components of signing to minimize data transfer. Although text messaging is a viable alternative for everyone, signing — like speech — is a much faster and more convenient form of communication."
Not being deaf I can't really say, but seems to be TXT'ing would be the way to go. Get the providers to go with a special "hey I'm deaf, cut me a slack and don't charge me $0.10 per SMS" plan and go about your business.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I've already seen sign language being used over video calls. Then again, as one who volunteers with autistic children, I've seen a lot of super-use of technology and hands...
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
But there's another problem with using sign language via cell phone. Look at the screen mock-up on that page - it shows the signers from the waist up. If your phone is far enough away that it can capture your whole body, how are you going to see the screen?
Also, they claim "The current wireless telephone network has inadvertently excluded over one million deaf or hard of hearing Americans", but it's easy to get a cell phone that supports TDD, just like a wired phone.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
The technology for this is very cool and all, but I don't see it as very applicable to use with cell-phones. As far as I know requires the use of both hands, so you would have to put down your phone in a way that you can be seen and you can see the screen and lastly without holding it. This seems like an impossible proposition. But the technology in its own right could be very interesting, at least for desktop video-conferencing units.
Nothing is impossible. We just haven't quite worked out how to do it yet.
I hope this compression scheme won't be tied to the semantics of a single sign language like ASL. There are plenty of other sign languages in the world, so hopefully this tech will be "language-agnostic", so to speak.
.: Max Romantschuk
I often use sign language to people using cell phones while they're driving.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
I still think deaf people should communicate by getting to kick non-deaf people in the crouch. It works similiar to morse code, but with "crunches" and "squishes" instead of "dots" and "lines".
But I'm one for giving handicapped people excuses to hurt the rest of us. It just seems fair. And I wear a cup.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Not all deaf can just use text. Some know only sign and don't know any English. It is impossible for them to use TTY's or other text. And even if it is possible, it can be slow and painful. Learning English text when you can't hear is a very very difficult thing to master. Especially literacy in a second language when you're illiterate in your first language. Stefan Wöhrmann in Germany has had great success teaching German text to deaf, but he uses written sign language for teaching.
Anybody seen Babel yet? They already use sign language via cell phones.
Sign language is much faster obviously, and sign language is based alot on the user's emotions and how they use a certain sign or signs.
But to answer the parent's question, none of the cell phone carriers offer a price break for deaf/hard of hearing users.
BUT the deaf community is fond of using the t-mobile sidekick, all versions, because of the relatively cheap unlimited txt/data plan that comes with it. Sidekicks are almost dominant among deaf people. Some deaf tech sites and companies offer the sidekicks significantly cheaper to deaf users since it is so popular among them.
I wouldn't call 3g exactly low-bandwidth and you can't even make video calls in older networks.. so yeah - WTF is the submitter on?
No, what you need is a pair of wiimote-like gloves that you wear which are connected to a tiny robot monkey on the recipients cellphone that mimics your movements. The recipient, in turn, wears another pair of gloves which are connected to the robot monkey on your phone.
OK, so instead of a robot monkey you could have a little animated monkey on your display, but a robot monkey would be better. Tiny robot monkeys is how Apple will implement it on the iPhone while the rest of the industry just has animated monkeys. Either way, watch for "signing monkeys" on Google Trends.
Although text messaging is a viable alternative for everyone, signing -- like speech -- is a much faster and more convenient form of communication
Speech is flavored in languages, like text. So speech is not convenient at all if this is what they are saying. Otherwise, signing is not more convenient because only a small fraction of people already know it. I'm confused. Someone explain it to me.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
They are flocking to the Sorenson VP-100 system.
:P
I cannot, for the life of me understand this, when there
are so many video based chat sites on the net.
All the deaf people I know have PC's. I met my first
deaf friend on the old BBS's. In the text messages on
FIDOnet.
I would not want a deaf user signing while driving
> Although text messaging is a viable alternative for everyone, signing --
> like speech -- is a much faster and more convenient form of communication."
Umm. I type as fast as I generally speak. I *can* speak faster, but then, I *can* type faster too, if I don't have to stop and think what I'm going to say. I imagine signing would be similar. So I would think text messaging would be just as fast.
Unless the problem is that it's hard to type on the available input device. In which case, fix the input device.
I don't guess there's anything _wrong_ with developing technology to allow sign language to be transmitted over the cell phone network, but it seems like a harder problem is being worked on to avoid having to solve an easier one.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
...thump, whack, slap. Sorry!
Reduce, reuse, cycle
I'm having trouble seeing any way of this working at all, for several reasons.
First, cell phones are not known for capturing detail so well on their small screens. Is a phone, even a camera phone, capable of taking in a person's signing that well?
Second, there's already a phone that's found common usage with the Deaf: The Sidekick. Several members of my university's ASL club use it as a regular communications device. That and I think you can also implement TTY on it. It's nearly the most useful method, if only you didn't have to fork out extra for such services.
The video call at a distance is just awkward. I suppose in certain situations even that can be valuable, but as an everyday thing I don't see it happening.
I agree, wiigloves would be the way to go. The way that they show the video analysis is similar to what artificial intelligence geeks have been trying for years at to give robots sight - with little success. It's not what the sign looks like that's important, it's the motion, so video capture is totally unnecessary. Besides, motion capture data is far smaller than video data - they probably wouldn't have any problem at all if they just stuck to motion capture and displayed it on a little monkey animation on the recipient's cell (deaf-to-deaf).
For deaf-to-speech, the call could be routed through a 3rd party server to translate the motion to any language-allowing the call to be sent to any regular phone.
Seems like there are so many issues to overcome before this mode of communication would be realistic. Like many other posters here, I feel that texting would be more efficient and reliable. ... However, I'm not hearing-impaired, and my thoughts are based on that ...
The important thing is that if hearing-impaired folks find a new (and maybe better for them) mode of communication, then that's a good thing, and more power to them!
Another big chance for Nintindo. Can they hack the Wiimote to translate sign language to text?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
They've obviously not considered the impact this could have on driving while using your cellphone.
Take a trip with me into the future & meet Marcie, Marcie is deaf & uses a sign language enabled cellphone.
While driving on the highway (yeah, still no flying cars), Marcies husband signs to her over the phone that he wants a divorce so he can marry his secretary.
She swerves slightly due to her shock.
I, being the cautious driver I am ahead of her, look in my rearview mirror at the moment she happens to flip her husband the finger before hanging up on him.
I, being unaware that Marcie is deaf & using her sign phone, say "oh hell no !" & lock up my brakes.
Since Marcie wasn't wearing her seatbelt when she slammed into the back of my car she was ejected through the windshield & now is not only deaf, but paralysed.
There is a somewhat happy ending to this story though, since I live in Florida, there was no legal excuse for Marcie to rearend me & I got 10 million dollars out of the money she gets in her divorce.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
At least in Finland, in cooperation with a Finnish hearing-impaired association, there's been some projects with 3G video-phones. Yes - selling a phone to deaf people opens up a nice new market :). Anyway, as far as I know the experiences have been overall positive - and no fancy sign-language-specific codecs or anything, just a normal 64kbps video phone call and a camera phone.
There is nothing new about this story. Sign language over mobile (cell) networks already works with regular 3G (UMTS) phones in Europe. Take a trip to Örebro in Sweden, which has a high concentration of hearing impaired due to a specialist education cent(e)r(e), and you'll see loads of teenagers using their 3G phones to talk using sign language. In the streets, on the bus, in cafes, everywhere. This article http://svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=37482&a=5369 32 (in Swedish) from February 2006 even talks of the local social security services offering customer service to hearing impaired using 3G phones and sign language.
A better idea might be something for the blind that vibrates out text messages in a morse code fashion. I expect this has already been done somewhere though. Gareth.
From the Phone Losers of America:
. mp3
EPISODE #3 - Deaf Relay Operators
This episode features my new co-host Mary, a relay operator. It also features songs, skits, messages, commentary, commercials and raps all performed by deaf relay operators. It's approximately 17 minutes long and the download is 15,597 kb. Click here to listen to it.
Most of the relay voicemail messages played are more than 10 years old. The message involving the terrorist blowing up a commuter airline, done in 1994, was left on my own voicemail by myself while hanging out in the Portland, Oregon airport. "Mahmoad" was my roommate's name. Other messages were left on my home answering machine by PLA readers that I don't know. Thanks to RTF who made the Shakesphere promo for us a couple years ago.
The people over at the Deaf Relay Message Board aren't too amused with this episode! Be sure to stop by and say hello to the board moderator, Clear-Conscience. There's some great messages there relating to relay prank calls and a lot of the ops think that they're vigilantes and will call back the pranksters.
The MP3 file is here: http://www.oldpeoplearefunny.com/sound/plaradio03
My site
I'm being funny.... mod +1, funny.
Hi,
The guys at RWTH Aachen University also work with sign language but their approach seems to be somewhat superior as they directly tackle recognition of sign language.
As the father of a now adult deaf daughter I have seen the quantum leap of communication over the past 30 years. When my daughter was growing up the TTY was the only tool available to the deaf for communication. Each person needed to have a TTY and the speed was a blazing 48 baud using the old Western Union standard. Text pagers came along and relay services allowed the deaf to reach outside of the limits that existed. However, would you want to have an interpreter in the middle of every conversation you had with your teenager on the phone. Interpreters are intrusive no matter how hard they try not to be, I can't imagine the things they must see and hear during a regular day. These new tools really allow the deaf and hard of hearing a better chance of having a more normal life. Texting is shorthand and leaves out any emotion at a real level. Direct face to face communication is always better for everyone both hearing and deaf. The ability to see the other person adds so much to the complete communication experience.
Don't some morse characters have 5 or 6 dots or dashes? what's the average length of a character in morse? I would have thought that the current phone keyboards where most characters are between 1 and 4 characters away would be faster. Plus the cognitive leap of having to learn another intermediary language... ? All numbers on a current keyboard are one key press, how does this compare to morse?
To everybody who mentioned that txt'ing or using a TTY is probably just easier: it is. There's a catch though, the literacy rate of Deaf people is ridiculously low, so there's a lot of misunderstandings that happen through txt'ing or using a TTY. Using a sign-language phone (while in my opinion is ridiculous since there's too many gotchas using it) would be faster for a majority of the population rather than trying to think up of a word they're never going to think up.
For Deaf people who are literate, txt'ing is not a problem. The majority of the Deaf and literate actually grew up using BBS's. (That's if they were old enough to know it.)
There's somthing very stupid with the concept of a sign language chat via cell phone. People are limited by the capabilities of a phone, and at the same time, given the capability, people will use it as they please. That means that no such 'sign language phone' exists (or will ever exist).
/.ers have said, those images in TFA look fake, you'll never get those from a real cellphone in the user's hands.
Either a phone has video transmitting capabilities, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then there's no hope of having a sign language chat (unless we use CGI to simulate it, which would be fancy texting). If it does, then optimizing th video codec for sign language would seem a good idea....... until someone uses that phone to transmit a video of machinery in action, or a landscape, or anything not related to sign language.
Basically a video phone is a video phone, people will use it for whatever they want to. If might make sense to make a 'sign language mode' that activates a special codec, but I think it'll only confuse things.
Oh, and as lots of
GPG 0x1B479C78
Siging is good for the deaf, but the blind have trouble using cell phone because they all react to input graphically instead of audibly.
--<Mike>--
There's a Brazilian project called Rybená that already translates SMS messages to the Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS, in Portuguese). For more information: http://www.rybena.org.br/rybena/rybena_ingles/rybe na_introduct.htm
Wow. Seriously fucking humorless mods today.
Parent is not flamebait, it's funny
You just set the phone flat on the table in front of you and angle up the top part, which contains the camera and the display. There is nothing magic about this - deaf users in Sweden do this all the time with their 3G phones.
Some people also hold it with their left hand in front of them and sign with their right. Although signed languages use both hands, deaf people can hold a perfectly intelligible conversation signing with just one hand.
There is a simple reason why deaf people prefer the VP-100 and VP-200 over video chats: Ease of use. The Sorenson phone instantly boots up if it is turned on, allows you to plug in a flasher, so that you can see when it rings, there are no complicated menus and setups to navigate through, and making a relay call is just a button away. All these things may seem like little nits individually, but add them up, and there is just no contest between a computer and a dedicated device like the VP-100.
Plus, being able to use the large TV screen is nice, too.
I wonder why they wouldn't use Bluetooth glove controllers instead (like that Ultra Power Glove concept, except there's no need for feedback). That way you don't need to hold your cellphone away to be able to sign, you can pretty much just put it on the desk and sign and see the response at the same time. Small app would stream the accelerometers data to make wire model of other party's hands signing, and even regular EDGE speeds should probably be fine (ok, throw in compression if you want to). Most normal phones have bluetooth connectivity anyways, so it'd be mostly off-the-shelf components.
Of course this probably wouldn't be the killer app for 3G connectivity but...
Hyperom.com
Sign language using deaf people overwhelmingly prefer to use video if it is available, for the same reasons that hearing people generally prefer a voice talk over having a text conversation. The only reason that the Sidekick and Blackberry are so popular among the deaf in the USA right now is that the US wireless networks are too slow to support signing.
In Sweden and Denmark, where 3G is widely available, it is a whole different world. About *everyone* in the deaf community there uses wireless video on a cell phone to communicate. More evidence: The Sorenson videophones have almost totally displaced TTYs and made a serious dent into instant text messaging. Video blogging has exploded in popularity here, as well, especially since the ruckus around the selection of Gallaudet's 9th president. Rest assured, once signing over wireless video becomes viable in the USA, text messaging will be relegated to a niche among the signing deaf community.
When I tested a 3G phone in Sweden, I was able to hold a conversation, but the frame rates were barely at the low limit of what is intelligible. While this is better than what we have in the USA right now, higher framerates or level of detail in the face would make comprehension much easier, and also cause less strain, as you need to concentrate less to understand the message.
There is no reason that this technology can't be applied to 3G phones, as well, to make sign language conversations even better and more usable.
I'm glad to see that this is on /. and that people are starting to think about the subject matter a little more but this will never go anywhere I'm afraid.
I live in Rochester, NY which has the highest amount of deaf people per capita in the country. I work for a company that provides video remote interpreting services to deaf people and run into this bandwidth issue on a daily basis.
The problem with this technology is that it is only a Band-Aid for the already mentioned 3G technology that eventually will be coming. Even if they get this to work perfectly, companies would be stupid to invest money in this developing technology that will become outdated in less than a year. When we start being able use 3G, 4G, [and whatever the next technology will be] to major cities across the country, the deaf community will finally have the ability to communicate without restrictions.
Until there is more of a demand to stream person recordings of their wedding day, you're not going to see 3G come for a long time.
can make the difference between "Where are you going?" and "[Do you mean that place] where you are going?" and "[That's] where you are going." So the Sign Language video needs to show the face in exquisite detail.
So far my patients seem to be happy with text messaging, and some members of the Deaf community (not my patients) have mentioned a concern that technological solutions such as videophones might not be good enough but non-Deaf people would not realize that the Deaf were at a disadvantage. (Sort of like if you had a crappy unreliable cell phone and everyone said, "Just phone me," etc. expecting you to use it just like a high quality land line.) I'm not sure that's a very valid concern since the hearing world has had to deal with crappy phone lines
I like how MobileASL detects skin to figure out which part of the video needs to be high quality, but with the other requirements (including the frame rate) I'll remain skeptical about cell phone video for Sign Language until I see it in action. (I also hope my patients don't start videophoning me, rather than the text messaging that they do now.
(examples here in Sign Language refer to American Sign Language)
-----
[1] "Deaf" with capital D means someone who is deaf (small d --meaning "can't hear") and also identifies with the culture of the Deaf, including using Sign Language.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
The idea that text messaging is always an easy alternative for deaf people is actually not the case. It is easy in the sense that typing and reading are unaffected by the inability to hear, but text messages are in the written form of some oral language, such as English. For people whose hearing is profoundly impaired from birth, English or whatever the local oral language may be, is a foreign language. In the US, many congenitally deaf people have ASL as their native language. They learn English to varying extents, but it is a foreign language whose structure is very different from that of ASL. The grammatical differences between English and ASL, even controlling for modality, are huge. Thus, depending on the individual's history of deafness and control of English, text messaging may be a difficult and awkward matter of using a foreign language one does not know very well. Many deaf people will feel much more comfortable if they can sign than if they have to use text messaging.
This is just stupid. I have already seen examples of deaf people signing to each other via cell phone. (See the movie, "Babel".) It's choppy, sure, but a 30fps video mobile was just announced which should do the trick.
My point is, the technology for simply transporting full video is already becoming available for purchase. I don't see any need for a specialized codec.
One potential use of this technology would be for interpreting.
I.e. Deaf person approaches bank teller, sets up cell phone/PDA on counter. Teller speaks, interpreter signs, deaf person watches and responds, and interpreter translates into speech. Teller listens, responds, etc.
Also, sign language (ASL) is a language in itself, like French or English.
For many deaf folks this would be like conversing with someone in their native tongue, as opposed to text messaging which would seem like using a second language.
anyone who even barely studies linguistics or deaf culture will tell you that a 3-D language like sign language.. A- since there is no written sign language (of any major use), you are actually forcing deaf people to use their non-native written english... it will never be as good. 2- Video chatting is using their native language, incorporates facial expression and they can fully express their thoughts and sentences. There are so many intricacies, you would be surprised.
It's all about the BiGD!
Yea, and I wish my friend would pay MORE attention to the road and stop signing with me! Can't anybody focus on their driving anymore?!
I'll think of a really good SIG just before I die.
are getting kicked off airplanes because all that signing looks like a gang bangers convention.
Well, imagine if you could use your phone not just to send SMS or use TTY services, but also to talk. And in your own language, instead of English.
Are you adequate?
A deaf friend calls me from time to time. She either txt msgs or uses her computer to IM a translator service here in Dallas. She gives them my name and number, and what she wants to say. They call me, tell me they are the service, who is calling, and what the msg is. They then text or IM her (depending on how she contacted them). We go back and forth that way. Slow, but functional. So far, we haven't tried talking dirty to each other via the service, but we've thought about it. :^)