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Sign language is the primary language for many deaf and hard-of-hearing people. But it currently is not possible for these people to interact with computers using their native language.
Because of this, researchers in recent years have spent lots of time studying the challenges of sign-language recognition, because not everyone understands sign language, and human sign-language translators are not always available. The researchers have examined the potential of input sensors such as data gloves or special cameras. The former, though, while providing good recognition performance, are inconvenient to wear and have proven too expensive for mass use. And web cameras or stereo cameras, while accurate and fast at hand tracking, struggle to cope with issues such as tricky real-world backgrounds or illumination when not under controlled conditions.
Then along came a device called the Kinect. Researchers from Microsoft Research Asia have collaborated with colleagues from the Institute of Computing Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) to explore how Kinect’s body-tracking abilities can be applied to the problem of sign-language recognition. Results have been encouraging in enabling people whose primary language is sign language to interact more naturally with their computers, in much the same way that speech recognition does.
