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Abstract

Abstract

The community with Hearing or Speaking Disabilities represents a significant component of the society that needs to be well integrated in order to foster great advancements through leveraging all contributions of every member in the society. When those people cannot read lips they usually need interpreters to help them communicate with people who do not know sign language, and they also need an interpreter when they use phones, because the communication will not be done easily if they are not using special aiding devices, like a Relay Service or Instant Messaging (IM). As the number of people with hearing and speaking disabilities is increasing significantly; building bridges of communications between deaf and hearing community is essential, to deepen the mutual cooperation in all aspects of life. The problem could be summarized in one question: How to construct this bridge to allow people with hearing and speaking difficulties communicate?

This project suggests an innovative framework that contributes to the efficient integration of people with hearing disabilities with the society by using wireless communication and mobile technology. This project is completely operator independent unlike the existing solutions (Captel and Relay Service), it depends on an extremely powerful Automatic Speech Recognition and Processing Server (ASRPS) that can process speech and transform it into text. Independent means, it recognizes the voice regardless of the speaker and the characteristics of his/ her voice. On the other side there will be a Text To Speech (TTS) engine, which will take the text sent to the application server and transmit it as speech. The second aim of the project is to develop an iPhone/iPad application for the hearing impaired. The application facilitates the reading of the received text by converting it into sign language animations, which are constructed from a database; we are currently using American Sign Language for its simplicity. Nevertheless, the application can be further developed in other languages like Arabic sign language and British sign language. The application also assists the writing process by developing a customized user interface for the deaf to communicate efficiently with others that includes a customized keyboard.

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/content/papers/10.5339/qfarf.2011.CSPS2
2011-11-20
2024-03-28
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http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/papers/10.5339/qfarf.2011.CSPS2
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