Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Translating Sign Language to English

A Device that can translate Sign Language to English
Deafness is not being able to hear anything. So how do deaf people communicate? There is an estimate that 500,000-2 million people use ALS (American Sign Language) on a daily basis. This is a way the deaf communicate by using hand gestures. There are many other people with normal hearing that don’t understand or communicate with ALS. Researchers at Texas A&M University have been developing a device that can translate sign language to English so deaf people can easily communicate with other people.
When I was younger I had a particular interest in ASL. When I was in third grade I took an after school course and my mom signed me up for a summer camp dedicated to learning the basic sign language gestures. I learned the value and  importance of it. And as I was scrolling through the articles, this one in particular caught my attention because of my personal connections and experience with ASL. The article describes how they attached sensors to a person's arm that calculates their movement and sends a code to the computer to translate the movement to English. The device is still in process and the computer only knows 40 hand signals which means it still has thousands of gestures to learn.
I think that this development is very important and that more people should know about this. Communication is the most important thing we use as humans in our everyday lives. There are many people who go without hearing but those people are ruled out by everyone else with normal hearing. Since non deaf people can hear then why should they bother learning ASL? With this development deaf people will have the ability to communicate with almost anyone. This helps with countless amount of things but most importantly, it allows deaf people to become more active in their social lives and it opens up more opportunities for them. Everyone should be able to have opportunities socially based and opens up more opportunities for  particular career interest. this development could change the world forever.

Works Cited

Bussing, Kim. “Smart Device Translates American Sign Language to English.” DOGO Newa ASL. © 2015 DOGO Media, Inc., 30 Oct. 2015. Web. 18 Jan. 2016. <https://www.dogonews.com/2015/10/30/smart-device-translates-american-sign-language-to-english>.

6 comments:

  1. Nice job Anna! I agree with you that this development is very important. Your article makes me want to learn ASL and work with deaf people. Having a device that can translate sign language to English so deaf people can easily communicate with other people is extremely important. This would make translating much easier.

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  2. Wow, this is so interesting! I never thought about how important sign language is to deaf people. It's their only way of communication. This article made me think of my GSD project which was kind of like ALS...but with blind people--helping them to read. It's really cool to think about how people come up with ways for people with disabilities to function and still are able to do the thing that they have lost the ability of. I like how you said at the end of the article, "Everyone should be able to have opportunities socially based and opens up more opportunities for particular career interest. this development could change the world forever." because I believe this is very true. People with deafness should be able to communicate and ALS allows them to. Thanks for writing this! You did an awesome job.

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  5. That is really neat! I have always wanted to learn but something has always goten in the way. Someone in my family is fluent in ASL. She went to collage to learn and I think this is a huge break through. Nice Job.

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