[games_access] Speech to Sign

[d. michelle hinn]

A complete aside but I was really interested in this -- I was talking 
to a researcher yesterday who does work about deaf teen culture and 
she mentioned to me that she was recently at a PhD dissertation 
defense via video conference. The student defending was deaf. So I 
asked her how that went, given that there were a variety of different 
ways that she (the researcher) could be broadcast to the student, who 
didn't read lips. I'd assumed that there was some sort of closed 
captioning but instead they had a sign language interpreter who 
translated in spoken word Jenny's (the researcher) signing to the 
non-signing members of the dissertation committee when she was 
signing a comment/question to the student and then she used spoken 
word when talking to the committee members directly rather than the 
student and the sign language interpreter would sign what was being 
spoken to the student. And it worked in a way more effective way than 
their early tests with live closed captioning. It was a really cool 
solution that worked for everyone that could have been a disaster 
before video conferencing got to today's standards and if the student 
had a committee with some real $#@$#@( faculty (not that the faculty 
would have been able to get away with it legally...but it's good to 
know that they really accepted this "non-traditional" (at least at 
the point in time where at) format and did what was fair for all AND 
still academically rigorous.

Reminds me...I was going to post something more about GDC 
Austin...I'll do so in a follow up email. :)

Michelle

>The comments on the YouTube video do make good points. Sign Language
>conveys a lot of important information in overall body language and
>facial expressions that I'm afraid will be lost on digital characters.
>I'm glad they did this research though. The next step is to analyze
>tone of voice and layer in facial expressions to match the tone of
>voice.
>
>>From a game developer standpoint, the only way something like this
>will be implemented in games as an alternative communication method is
>if it's software developers can license and include in their games.
>Even then, we're probably looking at hundreds, maybe thousands of
>additional animations, that all require disk and memory space.
>
>-Reid
>
>On 9/15/07, Barrie Ellis <barrie.ellis at oneswitch.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>>
>>  Somewhat hammered here with some good points against...
>>
>>  http://youtube.com/watch?v=RarMKnjqzZU
>>
>>  I can still see some good use for this here - e.g. on-line gaming where
>>  people are using a microphone for some of the gameplay - this kind of
>>  interpretation gives deaf gamers a better chance of keeping up with a
>>  converstation (if it works).
>>
>>  Barrie
>>
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