SIGACCESS

In recent years, several research projects have been developed for delivering Sign Language dictionary systems. These projects translate the spoken words into Sign Language animations and run as standalone applications or as Web applications from centralised Web servers. However, none have proposed a practical Sign Language dictionary which translates the spoken words into Sign Language using Web Services and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) technology.

This project researches a new concept of Sign Language mobile learning. This new concept promotes the opening, interoperability and mobility of Sign Language dictionaries based on Web Services and MMS messaging protocols.These technologies which are not adapted and tamed yet, would potentially answer some urgent needs and requirements for interoperability and mobility of Sign Language dictionaries. These technologies potentially will allow Sign Language dictionaries to support interoperable applications over heterogeneous networks and also support users‚ mobility.

There are several ethical considerations motivate this research and future work in this direction; mainly provide an efficient and personal means of supporting deaf people and supporting hearing people’s communication with deaf people.

The research technically will address the requirements of such a system which will allow users and application developers to become first class promoters of Sign Languages learning, by easily programming against Sign Language Mobile Web Service with minimal time, code customisation, cost, hardware and software requirements.