Yes and there's also a similar service where a signing person can video chat to a sign language interpreter who voice calls the hearing person while signing in the video chat. Proficient signers are very high bandwidth.
There's a nifty service for deaf people who sign called video relay - you just call any number without having to deal with operator, and you will see a sign language video interpreter pop up and they'll translate the call. It's insanely great and it's all free/sponsored by FCC.
There's of remote sign language interpretation and real time captioning services available. In the US, we have publicly funded video relay service (which translates between sign language and English for phone calls) and captioned calling (which provides captions for telephone calls). There are commercial equivalents of these services available for in person interactions and other countries.
I hope this isn't rude, but as a hearing person who knows very little about deaf culture, could you please help me understand why signing is preferable to text chatting?
And in a video chat with talking speakers, would you still prefer a sign interpreter, or are automatic captions good enough in that case?
I don't doubt your experiences, I just want to better understand them. As a hearing person, I often find it hard to understanding what people are saying over video chat (of any platform) and much preferable text chats or auto transcripts. But I'm sure that's not the case for everyone...
I'm not sure we understand each other. If the signing person can speak to employers etc. now via the device, they can only speak back with their mouths, or possibly speech recognition if well set up. The deaf person would have to be able to lip-read people who potentially don't know how to help them in that area. In other words, it might still be tricky to communicate.
No, of course not :). I was thinking more along the lines of a deaf-mute person being able to give a presentation or hold a lecture for people that do not understand sign language.
And yes, noted on the live interpreters point. Just to clarify - do you have multiple languages at the same time? Is it primarily ASL? Would love to learn more. Thanks!
Depends, if the speech is IRL-first and video-second then a sign language interpreter is better and cheaper than installing some sort of concoction to display live subtitles (which have to be typed by a paid steganographer).
But in any case, deaf people still have the need to practice reading their language, so removing it from everywhere except IRL conversations might be detrimental to them
so presumably not just ASL. In any case, this is probably a sorely needed service, if there are robust production pipelines for subtitling and dubbing in other written languages but not for sign languages.
Written english is often only a second language for Deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Sign languages have their own idioms, culture, and identity; ASL isn’t signed English.
I previously worked at a video relay service company (VRS in the US is a service paid for by the TRS fund through the FCC, and allows Deaf and hard-of-hearing people to make phone calls through video-chat with a ASL interpreter). In written English-based interactions with Deaf and hard-of-hearing colleagues, there is often a communication barrier as there often is with anyone speaking a second language.
In my personal experience working on tickets written by D/deaf colleagues, while sometimes we could communicate by whiteboard or text-based chat, it was indispensable to have the option to discuss the ticket with someone who could interpret present.
Okay, here's the full lowdown on how deaf people communicate.
Currently, deaf people log somewhere close to 2 million VRS minutes a month. These are services where they talk to a VI (video interpreter) to translate sign language as they call somebody else. This is their native language, and I assure you they prefer it more than any other mode of communication. Many of them absolutely abhor TTY and often relate text messages with that. However there are other services which piggy back off of AIM called IPRelay. This are the only way to communicate on the go, so they are somewhat popular, but nowhere near as popular as VRS.
Currently, the only real VRS solutions are point to point from their homes. Some companies have tried to piggy back off of Facetime with little success, largely due to constraints with the wifi and FCC regulations of logging minutes (that's how they get paid)
In the coming months, Sorenson (previously the Sorenson in the Sorenson codec http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorenson_codec), the largest provider by far of VRS services (more than a factor of 10) will start to unveil their full onslaught of VRS communications to the deaf community. Deaf people will be able to use VRS services on Android, iPhone, PCs and Macs. And not just on wifi, the goal is deployment on 3G and 4G networks, the holy grail, especially because wifi can get really tricky when users are behind firewalls.
What does it take for this deployment? Sorenson has a quality requirement of a minimum of 12 fps and sub 1 second latency over 3G and 4G networks, but a goal closer to 15fps. They've been able to meet their goals, and their video puts Qik to shame.
Sprint is likely going to license Sorenson's technology because they also provide some of their own branded VRS services.
So, will the hearing take to video chat? Maybe, maybe not. But the deaf will. For the first time in their life they'll be able to call anyone from anywhere you and I can, and talk to them in their native language, ASL.
I probably wouldn't have said any of this a month ago, but Sorenson started pushing a video teaser for their nTouch brand, which is the brand name for their entire solution (Mobile, PC, and TV based VRS systems)
my father is deaf and mute, particularly the Pakistani sign language, one particular utility i see this can be really useful for is if the model can be trained on detecting different sign languages, then it would become possible for live translation to happen and in a distant future all people like my dad can talk with each other beyond their small communities. I don't think something like that exists.
Assuming they're in the US, your deaf friend can use a free relay service. There are a bunch of variations, some that allow signing to an operator, others typing. All are free, and as accessible as this google bot.
(I assume your friend knows about these services, this is an FYI others.)
This is kind of unrelated, but I wonder if a small amount (say 100 signs or so) of sign language (ASL or local equivalent) wouldn't be useful for hearing people in their day-to-day lives. I'm very interested in sign-language, but language being what it is you can't do it alone ...
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