How Many People Use ASL in the United States? Why Estimates Need Updating

2011

Univ Access Inf Soc

Computer-generated animations of American Sign Language (ASL) can improve the accessibility of information, communication, and services for the significant number of deaf adults in the US with difficulty in reading English text. Unfortunately, there are several linguistic aspects of ASL that current automatic generation or translation systems cannot produce (or are time-consuming for human animators to create). To determine how important such phenomena are to user satisfaction and the comprehension of ASL animations, studies were conducted in which native ASL signers evaluated ASL animations with and without: establishment of spatial reference points around the virtual human signer representing entities under discussion, pointing pronoun signs, contrastive role shift, and spatial inflection of ASL verbs. It was found that adding these phenomena to ASL animations led to a significant improvement in user comprehension of the animations, thereby motivating future research on automating the generation of these animations.Keywords American sign language Á Animation Á Evaluation Á Sign language Á Spatial reference Á Verb inflection Á Accessibility technology for people who are deaf Abbreviations ASL American sign language HCI Human-computer interaction MT Machine translation BSL British sign language 1 Motivations and background American Sign Language (ASL) is the primary means of communication for about one-half million deaf people in the US [2]. ASL is a full natural language with a distinct word order, syntax, and lexicon from English-it is not simply a representation of English sentences using the hands. While degree of hearing loss, educational experiences, and family background affect whether someone uses ASL, there are many deaf individuals for whom ASL is their first or preferred language. Although written-English reading is an important part of the curriculum for deaf students in the US, a lack of auditory exposure to English during the language-acquisition years of childhood often leads to lower literacy for many deaf adults. In fact, the majority of deaf high school graduates in the US (age 18 and above) have only a fourth-grade English reading level [3] (fourth-grade US elementary school students are typically age 10).The information above has focused on ASL and the US, and it is important to note that sign languages are not universal internationally. Different countries have unique sign languages, with grammars and vocabularies that are distinct from each other. The sign language in a particular country is also typically independent from the local spoken/written language of that country; the sign language often has a distinct grammar and vocabulary from the

Section: Participants and Design Of The Spatial Reference Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of spatial reference and verb inflection on the usability of sign language animations

2011

Univ Access Inf Soc

“…ASL is not just a manual presentation of an English sentence; it has its own word-order, syntactic constructions, and vocabulary of signs (which may not have one-to-one equivalence with English words). ASL is used as a primary means of communication for about one half million people in the United States [15]. Because of the differences between English and ASL, it is possible to have ASL fluency yet significant difficulty reading English.…”

Section: Motivations and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of a psycholinguistically motivated timing model for animations of american sign language

Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

2008

Using results in the psycholinguistics literature on the speed and timing of American Sign Language (ASL), we built algorithms to calculate the time-duration of signs and the location/length of pauses during an ASL animation. We conducted a study in which native ASL signers evaluated the ASL animations processed by our algorithms, and we found that: (1) adding linguistically motivated pauses and variations in sign-durations improved signers' performance on a comprehension task and (2) these animations were rated as more understandable by ASL signers. Categories and Subject Descriptors General TermsAlgorithms, Design, Experimentation, Human Factors. KeywordsAmerican Sign Language, Animation, Natural Language Generation, Evaluation, Accessibility Technology for the Deaf. MOTIVATIONS AND RELATED WORKAmerican Sign Language (ASL) is a full natural language; signers use their hands, facial expression, eye gaze, head tilt, and body posture to convey linguistic meaning. ASL is not just a manual presentation of an English sentence; it has its own word-order, syntactic constructions, and vocabulary of signs (which may not have one-to-one equivalence with English words). ASL is used as a primary means of communication for about one half million people in the United States [15]. Because of the differences between English and ASL, it is possible to have ASL fluency yet significant difficulty reading English. In fact, a majority of deaf 18-year-olds in the United States have an English reading level below average 10-year-old hearing students [10]. Unfortunately, websites and other written-English information sources can also pose a challenge for deaf adults with low literacy skills. Software that can display computer-generated animations of American Sign Language can make more information, communication, and services accessible to these users. These ASL animations may be scripted by a content developer [13,19] or generated by Englishto-ASL automatic machine translation software [2,12,14,17].ASL signing conveys information at the same rate as spoken English [1], but the average speed at which most adults can read English text is much faster than the speed of spoken English audio. For deaf adults with low literacy to access information at a speed comparable to English-reading adults, ASL animations would need to be displayed quickly (while maintaining their understandability). The literature contains a range of values for "normal" signing speed: from 1.5 to 2.37 signs per second [1,6]. When ASL videos are played faster than 2.5 times normal, viewers' comprehension of the video drops significantly [4].Studies of English speech have shown a link between the presence of linguistic pauses and comprehension of the audio. One study increased the speed of an English speech recording, and researchers later inserted pauses at linguistically appropriate locations (between sentences, between clauses, between phrases) [21]. The pauses improved listeners' comprehension. This benefit only arose if pauses were at linguistically appro...

“…(U.S. 4 th -grade students are typically age 10.) There are over 500,000 people in the U.S. who use American Sign Language (ASL) as a primary language [22]. Given the linguistic differences between English and American Sign Language (ASL), it is possible to be fluent in one language but not the other.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Demographic and Experiential Factors Influencing Acceptance of Sign Language Animation by Deaf Users

Kacorri

Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers &Amp; Accessibility - ASSETS '15

Ebling

et al. 2015

Technology to automatically synthesize linguistically accurate and natural-looking animations of American Sign Language (ASL) from an easy-to-update script would make it easier to add ASL content to websites and media, thereby increasing information accessibility for many people who are deaf. Researchers evaluate their sign language animation systems by collecting subjective judgments and comprehension-question responses from deaf participants. Through a survey (N=62) and multiple regression analysis, we identified relationships between (a) demographic and technology experience/attitude characteristics of participants and (b) the subjective and objective scores collected from them during the evaluation of sign language animation systems. This finding suggests that it would be important for researchers to collect and report these characteristics of their participants in publications about their studies, but there is currently no consensus in the field. We present a set of questions in ASL and English that can be used by researchers to measure these participant characteristics; reporting such data would enable researchers to better interpret and compare results from studies with different participant pools.