Real-time Bhutanese Sign Language digits recognition system using Convolutional Neural Network

The communication gap between the deaf and public is the concern for both parents and the government of Bhutan. The deaf school urges people to learn Bhutanese Sign Language (BSL) but learning Sign Language (SL) is difficult. This paper presents the BSL digits recognition system using the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and a first-ever BSL dataset which has 20,000 sign images of 10 static digits collected from different volunteers. Different SL models were evaluated and compared with the proposed CNN model. The proposed system has achieved 97.62% training accuracy. The system was also evaluated with precision, recall, and F1-score.