Breaking Barriers with Sign Language Translation (with International Sign)

We live in an Uber digital world, and being able to access online information is an important part of life. Unfortunately, this isn’t always accessible for minority communities, such as the deaf and hard of hearing.
Today we learn about the challenges this community faces in the digital world and barriers that exist in sign language translation. We hear from experts who have been in the SignON Project, which is a European project aimed at overcoming these issues and creating a more accessible online experience.
Our guests today are Dr. Dimitar Shterionov, Assistant Professor in Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence at Tilburg University, who was scientific lead on the project, and Davy Van Landuyt, Project Officer with the European Union of the Deaf and an end user of the project as a deaf person. We are also delighted to be joined by interpreter Romy O’Callaghan.
This podcast has been published in both audio and video format. For video format with sign language please click here.
THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
The unique task of developing AI-powered technology for sign language translation
Challenges faced by the deaf community in accessing online information
How the SignON project is tackling these issues with new technology
Importance of co-creation and involving the deaf and hard of hearing community
Addressing data availability and quality before launching to the public
GUEST DETAILS
Dr. Dimitar Shterionov is Assistant Professor in Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence at Tilburg University, The Netherlands (scientific lead). Between January and July 2020 he worked as an assistant professor in Computing the School of Computing, DCU. Prior to that (2017 - 2019) he worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the ADAPT centre, DCU. He holds a PhD in computer science engineering from KULeuven, Belgium. He was the scientific lead of the EU-funded project on translation of sign and oral languages: SignON with Professor Andy Way of the ADAPT Centre.
Davy Van Landuyt is Project Officer with the European Union of the Deaf. Davy is a deaf Belgian with roots in the social-cultural movement and association work in the deaf community, going through all possible layers from the local level to the European level. Since 2021, he has worked as Project Officer for the European Union of the Deaf. Outside of his commitments in the deaf community, Davy is also active in the area of localization, specifically videogame and software localization in the Dutch language.
MORE INFORMATION
SignON is a European funded Horizon 2020 project that started in January 2021 and ran until December 2023, with the objective of addressing the communication gap between users of spoken languages and Deaf sign language users.
signon-project...
Adapt Radio is produced by DustPod.io for the Adapt Centre
For more information about ADAPT visit www.adaptcentre.ie/
QUOTES
In terms of society, we have to remember that it's very audio dependent. Everything is based on sound. Think of the TV, radio, emergency announcements in a train station or at an airport. Often audio Tannoy based information. It's very rarely considered to put it in a visual medium, and that's an issue for Deaf community members. - Davy Van Landuyt
In spoken machine translation, we deal with text which is just a linear sequence of words or tokens, right? While in sign language, we have so many other dimensions. - Dr. Dimitar Shterionov
Co-creation is led by end users to guide where tech needs to go, what ethical considerations need to be taken into perspective, and particularly as research is a hearing-dominant space, this openness and communication with end users is vital on any topic, whether it's this or others. - Davy Van Landuyt
When it comes to sign language, we can do recognition, we can do synthesis, but with a limited support that links mainly to the challenge of data availability and data quality that we have to train AI models. - Dr. Dimitar Shterionov
This is a model that can be taken to any project on a similar topic or a completely different topic, how we can think about societal access, how we can think about the barriers. - Davy Van Landuyt
KEYWORDS
#deafcommunity #signlanguage #deaf #technology #translation #data #machinetranslation