RESEARCH AREA: ACCESSIBILITY SERVICES
Easier
The aim of this project is to develop a fully automated translation and communication tool which acts as a framework for accessible communication among deaf and hearing individuals and enables them to interact using sign language. Term of the project: 2021 to 2023.
Background
Individuals who have been completely deaf since birth primarily communicate using sign language. They find reading and writing difficult – it is a foreign language for them.
With “SILAS (Sign Language as a Service)”, SWISS TXT has already developed a tool for companies which enables individuals to communicate using sign language.
The EASIER research project is a further development of SILAS. The idea is for fully automated “avatars” to take over the role of human sign language interpreters.
Aim and implementation of the EASIER project
- The aim of this project is to develop a fully automated, smart tool to enable deaf and hearing individuals to communicate and interact using sign language.
- The tool creates an accessible connection between companies/organisations and deaf individuals, for example when they access a company’s website.
- The tool’s workflow, for example, translates a video enquiry in sign language into text format so that the text response from hearing individuals can then in turn be automatically translated into sign language and conveyed by an avatar.
- The research analyses the emotions and gender-specific aspects of 7 sign languages and 6 spoken languages and takes them into account in the language technology.
EASIER is a Horizon 2020 project.
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