Multiple Language, User-Friendly Sign Language Chat

Abstract

The aim of this work is to introduce a concept of a gesture based sign language chat which enables the communication of hearing impaired people over networks. Existing applications handle that task not appropriately, since either high bandwidth networks are necessary or the extensibility of the vocabulary is complicated for untrained users. The chat needs a standard camera for data acquisition. Then the gesture is recognized using sign language recognition module and mapped to the gesture ID stored in the gesture database. Only the ID is transferred via the Internet to diminish the bandwidth overload. On the participants side the gestures are rendered. Moreover, the system supports uncomplicated extension of vocabulary by the user and easy word to word translation between different sign languages.