Search

Sign language is an essential means of communication for individuals with hearing disabilities. However, there is a significant shortage of sign language interpreters in some languages, especially in Saudi Arabia. This shortage results in a large proportion of the hearing-impaired population being deprived of services, especially in public places. This paper aims to address this gap in accessibility by leveraging technology to develop systems capable of recognizing Arabic Sign Language (ArSL) using deep learning techniques. In this paper, we propose a hybrid model to capture the spatio-temporal aspects of sign language (i.e., letters and words). The hybrid model consists of a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) classifier to extract spatial features from sign language data and a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) classifier to extract spatial and temporal characteristics to handle sequential data (i.e., hand movements). To demonstrate the feasibility of our proposed hybrid model, we created a dataset of 20 different words, resulting in 4000 images for ArSL: 10 static gesture words and 500 videos for 10 dynamic gesture words. Our proposed hybrid model demonstrates promising performance, with the CNN and LSTM classifiers achieving accuracy rates of 94.40% and 82.70%, respectively. These results indicate that our approach can significantly enhance communication accessibility for the hearing-impaired community in Saudi Arabia. Thus, this paper represents a major step toward promoting inclusivity and improving the quality of life for the hearing impaired. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on automatic translation of sign language to verbal languages has been progressively explored in recent years to assist speech and hearing-impaired people in communicating with non-signers. In this paper, a tiny machine learning (TinyML) solution is proposed for sign language recognition using a low-cost, wearable, internet-of things (IoT) device. A lightweight deep neural network is deployed on the edge device to interpret isolated signs from the Indian sign language using the time-series data collected from the motion sensors of the device. The scarcity of labeled training data is addressed by employing the deep transfer learning approach. Here, the knowledge gained from the data collected using the motion sensors of a different device is used to initialize the model parameters. The performance of the model is assessed in terms of classification accuracy and prediction time for different sampling rates and transferring schemes. The model achieves an average accuracy of 87.18% when all the parameters are retrained with just 4 observations of each sign recorded from the motion sensors of the proposed IoT device. The recognized sign is transmitted to a cloud platform in real-time. A mobile application, SignTalk , is also developed, which wirelessly receives the predicted signs from the cloud and displays it as text. Additionally, text-to-speech conversion is also provided on SignTalk to vocalize the predicted sign for better communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]