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A Web Application for Geolocalized Signs in Synthesized Swiss German Sign Language

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Computers Helping People with Special Needs (ICCHP 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 9759))

Abstract

In this paper, we report on the development of a web application that displays Swiss German Sign Language (DSGS) signs for places with train stations in Switzerland in synthesized form, i.e., by means of a signing avatar. Ours is the first platform to make DSGS place name signs accessible in geolocalized form, i.e., by linking them to a map, and to use synthesized signing. The latter mode of display is advantageous over videos of human signers, since place name signs for any sign language are subject to language change. Our web application targets both deaf and hearing DSGS users. The underlying programming code is freely available. The application can be extended to display any kind of geolocalized data in any sign language.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “GENF” is an example of a sign language gloss, a label for the meaning of a sign. Glosses are commonly written in all caps.

  2. 2.

    A spoken language is a language that is not signed, whether it is represented as speech or text.

  3. 3.

    http://signsuisse.sgb-fss.ch/ (last accessed: January 14, 2016).

  4. 4.

    It is a widely recognized convention to use the upper-cased word Deaf for describing members of the linguistic community of sign language users [5].

  5. 5.

    http://vh.cmp.uea.ac.uk/index.php/JASigning (last accessed: January 14, 2016).

  6. 6.

    http://www.bav.admin.ch/dokumentation/publikationen/00475/01497/index.html (last accessed: January 14, 2016).

  7. 7.

    http://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/internet/swisstopo/en/home/products/software/products/skripts.html (last accessed: January 14, 2016).

  8. 8.

    Zoom level 0 is the most zoomed out (the entire world is shown), meaning that you need to zoom in eight times to get to zoom level 8 (Switzerland).

  9. 9.

    https://api.jqueryui.com/autocomplete/ (last accessed: January 14, 2016).

  10. 10.

    https://www.spreadthesign.com/de/map/ (last accessed: January 14, 2016).

References

  1. Boyes Braem, P.: A multimedia bilingual database for the lexicon of Swiss German Sign Language. Sign Lang. Linguist. 4(1/2), 133–143 (2001)

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  2. Elliott, R., Glauert, J., Kennaway, R., Marshall, I.: The development of language processing support for the ViSiCAST project. In: Proceedings of the 4th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS), pp. 101–108. Arlington, VA (2000)

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  3. Jennings, V., Elliott, R., Kennaway, R., Glauert, J.: Requirements for a signing avatar. In: Proceedings of the 4th LREC Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages, pp. 133–136. La Valetta, Malta (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Matthews, P., McKee, R., McKee, D.: Signed languages, linguistic rights and the standardization of geographical names. In: Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, pp. 721–732. Toronto, Canada (2008)

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  5. Morgan, G., Woll, B.: The development of complex sentences in British Sign Language. In: Directions in Sign Language Acquisition: Trends in Language Acquisition Research, pp. 255–276. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2002)

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  6. Prillwitz, S., Leven, R., Zienert, H., Hanke, T., Henning, J.: HamNoSys: Version 2.0: An Introductory Guide. Signum, Hamburg (1989)

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Acknowledgments

Synthesized signing was produced with the JASigning software developed at the University of East Anglia, UK. We gratefully acknowledge the work of Prof John Glauert, Dr Ralph Elliott, Dr Richard Kennaway, and Mr Vincent Jennings on Animgen. Furthermore, our thanks go to the Bundesamt für Verkehr and Swisstopo, where we obtained the relevant data for the train stations of the SBB and a Python script to convert the coordinates.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Computational Linguistics, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Anna Jancso, Xi Rao, Johannes Graën & Sarah Ebling

Authors
  1. Anna Jancso
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  2. Xi Rao
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  3. Johannes Graën
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  4. Sarah Ebling
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sarah Ebling .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute Integriert Studieren, Universität Linz, Linz, Austria

    Klaus Miesenberger

  2. Rehabilitationswissenschaften, Technische Universität Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

    Christian Bühler

  3. Masaryk University , Brno, Czech Republic

    Petr Penaz

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Jancso, A., Rao, X., Graën, J., Ebling, S. (2016). A Web Application for Geolocalized Signs in Synthesized Swiss German Sign Language. In: Miesenberger, K., Bühler, C., Penaz, P. (eds) Computers Helping People with Special Needs. ICCHP 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9759. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41267-2_62

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41267-2_62

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-41266-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-41267-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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