Automatic speech processing systems are employed more and more often in real environments. Although the underlying speech technology is mostly language independent, differences between languages with respect to their structure and grammar have substantial effect on the recognition systems performance. In this paper, we present a review of the latest developments in the sign language recognition...

The treatment option for cancers of the tongue is glossectomy, which may be partial, sub-total, or total, depending on the size of the tumour. Glossectomies result in speech deficits for these patients, and rehabilitative therapy involving communication modalities is highly recommended. Sign language is a possible therapeutic solution for post-glossectomy oral cancer patients. Patients with ton...

We report the first study on pronoun use by an under-studied research population, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exposed to American Sign Language from birth by their deaf parents. Personal pronouns cause difficulties for hearing children with ASD, who sometimes reverse or avoid them. Unlike speech pronouns, sign pronouns are indexical points to self and other. Despite this transp...

Development of sign synthesis (also known as text-to-sign) can benefit from studying the history of its older cousin, speech synthesis. As Klatt [1] outlines the basic architecture of a speech synthesis application, I will discuss the architecture of a sign synthesis application and mention some of the applications and prototypes currently available. I will focus on SignSynth, a CGI-based artic...

Gestural interfaces, besides providing natural means of humancomputer interaction for everyone, enable the hearing impaired to use sign language or better understand speech through vision. This chapter overviews (1) the various modalities involved in gestured languages (2) the mean to automatically apprehend them individually and (3) to fuse them in order to provide a communication medium adapt...