Maartje De Meulder is a deaf scholar and is currently a lecturer and senior researcher at HU - University of Applied Sciences Utrecht. In 2021 she wrote and published an article titled Is "good enough" good enough? Ethical and responsible development of sign language technologies in the AT4SSL (https://aclanthology.org/2021.mtsummit-at4ssl.2/). We took this opportunity to interview her to discuss the article.
On the 28th of March we organised our third internal seminar, this time presented by Prof. dr. Myriam Vermeerbergen (KU Leuven) and Prof Lorraine Leeson (Trinity College Dublin), who are members of our consortium. It all started with a tasty introduction: "Sign languages are lasagna and spoken languages are spaghetti". Like lasagna, sign language simultaneously contains several layers that together form a meaning. After all, in contrast to spoken language, which is sequential (without co-speech gestures), in sign language information can be conveyed simultaneously via several modalities: hands, mouth image, facial expression, body movement. It was an interesting lecture on various different characteristics of sign languages.
The SignON Consortium strongly believes in maintaining a constant dialogue with our target audiences. That is why we have launched a new video series. On "The SignON Forum" we invite everyone to share their questions, concerns, comments or ideas with us. Aleluya Peña from Spain was the first to share her thoughts on the application of sign language avatars. The consortium also responded to her video, as can be seen at the end of the video below. We encourage all of you to join the discussion in your preferred language. If you would like to share your opinion/idea/concern/comment publicly, along with our response to it, please feel free to send it to signon-comms@adaptcentre.ie
As we approach the end of 2021, the SignON Project has almost completed its first year of three. In the video above, discover what the SignON consortium has achieved over the last 12 months.
The European Union of the Deaf (EUD) ensures that the SignON project is closely connected to deaf communities all over Europe. Using surveys to reach out to these communities, they collect responses and reactions to the idea of using machine translation in spoken and signed languages to drive the generation of sign language avatars. In the video above, the Executive Director of EUD, Mark Wheatley, is interviewed about the results from the distribution of these surveys during the last year.
On the 16th of December, Maartje De Meulder, deaf scholar and currently a lecturer/senior researcher at HU - University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, who specialises in Deaf Studies, gave an internal seminar to our consortium. She spoke about Deaf Studies, how it has evolved over the years, and how it can help to provide insights now. She is the author of a paper on sign language technologies (such as machine translation systems and sign language avatars): Is "good enough" good enough? Ethical and responsible development of sign language technologies.
On November 20, VGTC organised a lecture and workshop about "language police or not?". Hundreds of Flemish signers gathered for this. Our communication team also took this opportunity to inform the public about the SignON project. Then we did a small survey among the deaf Flemish signers to find out what they think about the project. Curious about their opinions? Watch our video report!
Did you also see the news about the sign language avatar for the 2022 winter Olympics in China? The sign language avatar will be on display for the first time during the Winter Olympics in February. The avatar can understand the sports reporters and presenters, and convert that commentary into sign language
We'd love to hear your thoughts on this!
On November 4, Jorn Rijckaert, SignOn's communications manager, gave a lecture during an internal seminar for our consortium. In his lecture Jorn covered several topics, such as the historical oppression of sign languages and deaf culture, and deaf emancipation. His lecture aimed to raise awareness among all partners involved in the project. This is essential since a part of the deaf community is resisting automatic translation from spoken language to sign languages, and vice versa, using 3D avatars. Jorn explained where this resistance stems from, to help everyone involved have a better understanding of this attitude towards the project.
The SignON team are driven by listening to what the (potential) users want. V0.1 of the SignON mobile phone App was tested internally. Feedback from this evaluation & responses from round 1 of the co-creation process were used to develop v0.2 for both Android and Apple phones.
