An animated avatar to interpret signwriting transcription

Abstract

People with hearing disability often face multiple barriers when attempting to interact with hearing society. The lower proficiency in reading, writing and understanding the spoken language may be one of the most important reasons. Certainly, if there were a commonly accepted notation system for sign languages, signed information could be provided in written form, but such a system does not exist yet. SignWriting seems at present the best solution to the problem of SL representation as it was intended as a practical writing system for everyday communication, but requires mastery of a set of conventions different from those of the other transcriptions systems to become a proficient reader or writer. To provide additional support for deaf signers to learn and use such notation, we propose in this paper a new tool for displaying SW notation content, automatically, in visual-gestural modality by using a 3D signing avatar. The notation is provided as input in an XML based format called SWML (SignWriting Markup Language). Such tool can help the deaf to grasp and interact with the transcribing data through a more user-friendly environment.