1Sign Language Interpretation via Mobile

Videotelephony allows deaf people to communicate in the way which is most natural to them, i.e. through signing and/or lip reading. Mobile videotelephony will have the additional advantage of providing deaf people with ubiquitous access. This will become possible with the introduction of broadband mobile networks, especially the UMTS. The experiments to be reported were carried out as part of the EU-funded ACTS project UMPTIDUMPTI. They show how mobile videotelephony on the UMTS offers new opportunities for the deaf. The networks were wireless LANs, which served as a model for the UMTS. The terminals were laptop PCs equipped with videoconferencing hard- and software. First it was shown that videotelephony over wireless LAN is suitable for communication via sign language and/or lip reading, and that a laptop PC can be just as suitable for this as a desktop PC. Given the videotelephony technology used (i.e. NetMeeting), a bandwidth of 128 Kbps was suitable for signing, but for lip reading 400 Kbps was required. It was also found that the deaf subjects regarded text communication in combination with videotelephony as very useful even if the video quality is good enough for signing and lip reading. Subsequently, the research focused on sign language interpretation. Two scenarios were investigated in user trials: (1) mediation between speech and sign language in a speech-to-sign relay scenario; and (2) remote interpretation in which a deaf signer and a hearing person are in one location and communicate with each other through a sign language interpreter at another location. The results showed that mobile videotelephony can be suitably applied in both the remote sign language interpretation scenario and in the relay scenario; but feedback from the deaf users indicated that remote sign language interpretation is probably the most promising of the two scenarios. It would give deaf people at short notice access to a interpreter; for instance when visiting a doctor. 1