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We have developed a simple tentative version of the driving simula-tor for rehabilitation using a Personal Computer (SDS). We described the over-view of the system and the trial usage of this system for people with Cere-brovascular disease. The test results of the subjects whom an occupational therapist in attendance assessed to be able to drive a car showed values almost the same as the data of the healthy subjects. The effectiveness of the system was suggested in the preliminary experiments and a case study. Keywords: Cerebrobascular disease, Rehabilitation, Driving simulator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We developed a handrail which can provide functional assistance. The result of basic experiment shows the force on the handrail could be used to expect the center of gravity of the user. And also, the handrail could assist the moving ability of a subject who cannot stand up even if using the normal handrail. In future, establish the human standing up modeling and adaptive handrail controlling for the handrail. Keywords: Power assistance, Hand rail, Standing up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this research was the design and implementation of a writing module that is integrated with a myoelectrical-based gripper as a potential prosthetic device that could help amputees recover some of their writing abilities. The developed module would hence offer increased functionality to current prostheses. This novel device required multidisciplinary design in mechanical, electrical, and software areas. The robust integration of these key technical areas ensured a reliable module that allowed converting voluntary muscle contractions from remaining muscles into written characters. The writing module spanned over a specific writing area using a mechanical finger to yield a realistic and feasible design. The electrical implementation involved capturing and processing real time myoelectric signals (EMG). The software section utilized an assembler based algorithm to control the overall device using the processed signals. After processing a serially inputted code, the implemented writing module accurately selected and generated the requested characters with reliable and acceptable printing quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study designed an alternative Chinese keyboard layout for single-digit typists and evaluated the efficacy of this innovative layout design. The new eight row by five column keyboard layout was designed based on the principles of alternative keyboard design. Eight college students with proficient keyboarding were involved in this study. The repeated measurement experimental design was used to compare the speed and accuracy of keystroke among the four different keyboard patterns: QWERTY, Alternative, Revised-QWERTY, and Random-Alternative. The experimental results indicated that the subjects' typing speed is fastest when utilizing the QWERTY layout (63.86 symbols/minute), followed by the Alternative (56.02 symbols/minute), Revised QWERTY (53.39 symbols/minute) and the Random-Alternative keyboard (49.94 symbols/minute). There is no significant difference among QWERTY, Alternative, Revised-QWERTY, and Random-Alternative layouts on the subjects' typing accuracy. The possible causes of the unpredicted results and suggestions for further studies were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient input devices for computers and automatic equipment can improve the quality of life for severely disabled people. This work describes a new tongue- computer interface to be used by the disabled to access computers and new technologies. The new sensor system may be used during eating and speaking and may incorporate as many activation buttons as the number of characters in the alphabet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An improved hands-free cursor control system suitable for use by individuals with spinal dysfunction or spinal cord injury is introduced. The system uses electromyogram (EMG) signals from facial muscles to produce five distinct cursor actions, namely: left, right, up, down and left-click. The new system is derived from a system previously created by our group. Object selection tests are performed on both systems. We use statistical analysis and Fitts' law analysis of these tests to support our assertion that the new system provides enhanced performance over its predecessor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Word prediction is a process that tries to guess the word a user is writing, at the same time he/she is doing it. It is mainly used to decrease the effort needed to write a text in applications devoted to people with disabilities. In this paper, we describe and evaluate the architecture of a multilingual word prediction system. The proposed architecture is modular and flexible, with common interfaces between the modules to allow the use of different prediction algorithms or even the prediction in different languages. The current system consists of a general lexicon for each language, the possibility to create and store personal lexicons, prediction methods based on words and POS (parts of speech) probabilistic grammars (when available). The system has been trained and evaluated for English, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. The Spanish version is currently included in a technical aid widely used for people with communication disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EMU is a program that supports disabled people to write text faster and/or with less physical load. The program was developed based on knowledge of the outcome of the R&D project IST-2000-25420 FASTY. This paper shows how the commercially available program EMU was developed with special attention to the test results with the final prototype coming from the EC project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an approach to the development of a voice-input voice-output communication aid (VIVOCA) for people with disordered or unintelligible speech, initially concentrating on people with moderate to severe dysarthria. The VIVOCA is intended to recognize and interpret an individual's disordered speech and speak out an equivalent message in clear synthesized speech. User consultation suggests that such a device would be acceptable and would be useful in communication situations where speed and intelligibility are crucial. Speech recognition techniques will build on previously successful development of speech-based home control interfaces, and various methods for speech ‘translation' are being evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the use of iconicity testing to evaluate symbol ‘quality' and to examine differences in symbol perception in different ethnic groups. The paper largely replicates an earlier study by Haupt and Alant in which a communication grid of PCS symbols was evaluated with Zulu children. In our study 10 university-educated people with long experience of Western European culture are used to test the symbols. They achieve an overall symbol correctness of 50.3% (compared with Haupt and Alant's 18.9%) and 27.8% symbols are strictly iconic (2.8% for Haupt and Alant) and 55.6 are iconic according to a lenient criterion (11.1% for Haupt and Alant). The concept of distinctiveness as defined by Haupt and Alant is also investigated, as is a method of analyzing symbols based on frequency of selection and correctness when selected. The overall conclusion is that iconicity tests can be usefully employed for assessing symbol quality and determining the difference between ethnic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a proposition of a communication system for the blind and deaf-blind person. The system is composed of a terminal which is named "Doubled Braille display terminal for the Deaf-Blind person (DB4DB)." This terminal equipped with two-lined refreshable Braille displays and its software is based on an Internet chat program. The one line of the display is for confirmation of inputted sentence by the user and the other one is for reading all messages from members who take part in the chat space. The proposal system enables the blind and deaf-blind person to recognize message from another member at anytime, even he/she is inputting his/her message. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finger braille is one of the communication methods for the deaf blind, which seems to be the most suited medium for real-time communication by its speed and accuracy in transmitting characters. We hypothesize that the prosody information exists in the time structure of finger braille typing. Prosody is the paralinguistic information that has functions to transmit the sentence structure, prominence, emotions and other form of information in real-time communication. In this research, we performed a cognition experiment on 12 subjects with a simulated output to confirm the effect of prosody in the time structure. As a result, the percentages of questions answered correctly were 79 % for the prosody simulated output and 65 % for the monotonous output. The result shows the possibility that the prosody information of finger braille can be applied to the assistive technologies for deaf-blind people's communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates 4 commercial text-to-speech synthesisers used by dyslexic people to listen to and proof read text. Two evaluators listened to 704 common English words and determined whether the words were correctly pronounced or not. Where the evaluators agree on incorrect pronunciation, the proportion of correct pronunciations for the four synthesisers is in the range 98.9% to 99.6% of the 704 words. The evaluators also listened to the same synthesisers speaking phrases in which there were 44 pairs of homographs and determined whether each instance of the homograph was correctly spoken or not. The level of correctness for the four synthesisers ranged from 76.3% to 91.3%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to help people with communication problems, we present a platform for creating an augmentative and alternative communicator which runs on a Pocket PC. This communicator is based on an adaptive hypermedia, and may be configured and adapted for each individual person. It has been used with autistic children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present work an electronic panel designed for helping people with deficiencies in their understanding of the sense of time is showed. The device will be installed in special education classrooms. It tries to meet the following objectives: 1) To provide disabled people with temporal orientation and to help in learning the use of conventional clocks. 2) To make the concept of temporal grouping easier. The grouping mechanism reflects the ability to use the information about task or work at some point correlated with temporal indicators. 3) To make anticipation of the sequence of events possible for autistic children. The results of the device's evaluation will allow authors to improve the design. Thus, it could be possible to extrapolate the use of the device on homes for disabled children or for elderly people with cognitive disabilities or even in the early stages of senile dementia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fear of public speaking is one of the most wide-spread social problems of the world today. It is present in early childhood as well as in adultness, and causes problems with further influence on the child's entire life. The hesitation or the inability to speak in a heart-quaked situation can easily lead to bullying from classmates or even the teacher can misinterpret it as lack of knowledge or unwillingness to give the answer at all. For helping such children overcome their fear we developed a virtual environment imitating a classroom with its usual elements. The user immerses the virtual environment via a head mounted display where he or she must solve tasks in a "living" classroom of noisy, commentating classmates and a virtual teacher. A teacher or therapist supervises the acting in the virtual class and reacts to the doings of the user through speaking to him directly or allocating a speech utterance or other act to one of the virtual classmates. Due to its complex nature and complete adaptability the virtual classroom proved to be a very useful tool in helping such children and it is already in use in a primary school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports results of a workshop on the design of electronic content for users with Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD), particularly Arabic dyslexics. First we shed some light on the nature of the Arabic language and discuss features that account for the unique needs of Arabic users with reading disorders. Then we present recommendations for accessible web design for Arabic content in light of existing guidelines on web design for dyslexic users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the value of face-to-face interaction in communication and learning, our persistent goal has been to develop, evaluate, and apply animated agents to produce realistic and accurate speech. We have implemented these agents as computer-assisted speech and language tutors for hard of hearing and autistic children, and other children with language challenges. Our language-training program utilizes conversational agents, who guide students through a variety of exercises designed to teach vocabulary and grammar, to improve speech articulation, and to develop linguistic and phonological awareness. We report a new experiment showing its effectiveness for school children learning English as a new language. Some of the advantages of this pedagogy and technology include the popularity and effectiveness of computers and embodied conversational agents, the perpetual availability of the program, and individualized instruction. Animated tutors offer a promising approach to language learning, human-machine interaction, and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new audio testing system was developed for the newly blind and the learning disabled (dyslexia) who have difficulties with reading braille or print-format tests. The system enables them to take the National Center Test for University Admissions. The system was developed primarily on a tablet PC and presents not only speech sound but also document structures and figures from the test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the analysis, design, development, deployment and evaluation stages of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) software aimed at dyslexic learners. CALL is traditionally aimed at second language acquisition. The research presented here is different because the target group are students with first language difficulties. Dyslexia is a specific learning disorder, which affects roughly eight percent of the population in Ireland [5]. This research identifies the lack of support for dyslexic teenagers in Irish secondary schools and establishes their particular needs. The paper describes CALL courseware development in progress, which aims to aid the reading, organisation and exam skills of dyslexic students through the use of online authentic Junior Certificate history curriculum texts. The final evaluation phase of the project will assess the efficacy of the software and investigate the question of whether dedicated software can improve the reading skills of teenage dyslexic students at word, sentence and text level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children with autism exhibit a deficit in the comprehension and creation of narrative which impacts their social world. Our ongoing research agenda is to find ways of developing interactive learning environments which enhance the ability of individual children with autism to deal with narrative and thus the social world. The study reported here involved 12 children in a longitudinal study which focussed on identifying the particular aspects of narrative which individual children found difficult. Our aim was to investigate each individual child's understanding of ‘primitive' components of narrative by means of an interactive software game called TouchStory which we developed for this purpose. Our results show, for most of the children, an ongoing and clear distinction in their understanding of the various narrative components, which relates their narrative comprehension as shown by a picture-story based narrative comprehension task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will present design research carried out between 1999-2004 at the University of Art and Design Helsinki in collaboration with the Classroom Teacher Training Programme for Finnish Sign Language Users of Jyväskylä University, Finland. The aim of the project was to produce an accessible web-based study product, as well as to clarify the sign language students' deepening of knowledge and conceptualization related to the subject of cinematic expression, as well as their collaboration during the web-based course. The aim of the design research was connected to the general aim of inclusion, for a shared university for all, which adapts flexibly to the needs of different and diverse students. The design research was positioned in the areas of film art and pedagogy. By merging participatory action research and WWW production a collaborative study concept dealing with cinematic expression entitled, CinemaSense, was developed and produced as part of the research work. It can be accessed at http://elokuvantaju.uiah.fi/. The usability and accessibility of the CinemaSense was observed during web-based courses in cinematic expression during 2001, with the help of a concept survey and network-based communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an experience of ethically aware design of a location service intended to monitor residents in an institution for people with dementia. As location systems have a direct impact over privacy and personal autonomy, the system design was preceded by a deep study of ethical and social impact. Among its contributions it can be emphasized that this study was extended both to patients and also to caregivers that were located in order to provide urgent assistance. The conclusions of this experience were compiled as design guidelines and used for the technological design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purposes of this study are to assess the aided effects of computer in cognitive and vocational rehabilitation of clients with psychiatric disabilities and to follow up their employment status. All participants from a community mental rehabilitation unit take a three-month computer skill training program. Participants complete computer key-in test and attention test at the beginning and at the end of the computer skill training program. The researcher assesses all participants' behaviors in class by using observation in every session. After six months, ten participants are still employed and their works are related to computer skills. The significant cognitive improvements of these participants are attention focus ability, problem solving skills, and memory retention ability. In addition, participants completing computer training program can use learned computer skills to obtain more work opportunities. Therefore, applying computer skill training programs to psychiatric disabled clients can improve not only their cognitive abilities but also vocational skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on diverse adaptive benefits of computer use by frail elders in the U.S.A. who are attempting to maintain independent lifestyles. Case studies are presented based on data from an ongoing longitudinal study (N=1000) of older adults living in a retirement community [12]. It is argued that technology may extend the autonomy and independence that older people value, which may be threatened as they encounter functional decline, especially in very old age. The data lend support to theoretical models proposed by Baltes and colleagues regarding selective optimization with compensation, as cha-racterizing successful adaptation to late life disability. Furthermore, results demonstrate that technology is increasingly utilized by old-old adults and that the flexibility afforded by computer-supported health communication presents a useful resource for older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on non-pharmacological therapies (cognitive rehabilitation) in old age has been very limited, and most has not considered the effect of intervention of this type over extended periods of time. The aim of Donostia Longitudinal Study was to investigate a new cognitive therapy in a randomized, placebo-controlled group of elderly people over 65 years of age without cognitive deterioration or expressed AAMI (Age Associated Memory Impairment) and patients with a Alzheimer's Disease (AD). The efficacy of this therapy was evaluated by means of post-hoc analysis of 390 people using biomedical, neuropsy-chological, affective, and personality assessments. In the GDS 1-2 grouping,scores for learning potential and different types of memory for the treatment group improved significantly relative to the untreated controls. While, subjects with a GDS 3-4 showed significantly better performance on Neuropsychiatric inventory (NPI) scores in all domains (anxiety, depression, apathy, sleep disturbances). Finally subjects with a GDS 5-6, showed a maintenance of cognitive capacities. In the GDS 1-2 grouping, the most significant result found is that learning potential of trained people enhances within two years of intervention, this involves a successful ageing sign and plays a preventive role in dementia development. On the other hand, in the GDS 3-4 and GDS 5-6 grouping, the behavioral disturbances diminished within this intervention, so this type of training program could be beneficial on them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrical household appliances and IT (information technology) are believed to increase the QOL and well-being of the people who use them. The benefits of electronic devices for elderly people would be more evident than for younger people because it is assumed that such equipment would compensate for the decline of functional ability in the elderly. However, there has been only very limited research on the actual usage and influence of such devices in relation to generation and age. The purposes of the present study were to clarify the actual situation with regard to the use of IT and electronic devices by community-dwelling elderly, and to characterize individuals according to their familiarity with such devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a location aware alarm system developed to give each person greater and safer mobility by automatically detecting risk situations. Location awareness has been possible thanks to an indoors positioning system (IPS) based on Bluetooth and ultrasounds, developed by the authors. The IPS is able to give accuracies of several centimetres, using a reduced infrastructure (6 fixed beacons every 100 m2). The alarm system has been implemented in several stances of a special education school. Preliminary evaluation results show its reliability and usability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years hundreds of successful community-driven open source software projects have incarnated. However, it is quite hard to find similar success stories in the field of neuropsychological rehabilitation. This paper describes the core ideas of the NeurOSS project. The project aims at building an open source software platform for developing tools for neuropsychological rehabilitation, and gathering up a community of people from all over the world to contribute to shared collection of open source plug-in components extending and utilizing the core services of the platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the clinical department of Dermatology at the Medical University Hospital in Graz, approximately 30 outpatients consult the pigmented lesion clinic each day. During the visit, the patients are asked to complete a questionnaire, which is necessary, both for the clinical information system and for a scientific database for research in skin cancer. However, motorically and visually handicapped people usually have problems in completing paper based questionnaires. Consequently, a system was built, using a mobile touch computer with a specially designed interface, in order to assist these people and to allow full mobility within the clinical department, as well as the possibility of completing questionnaires, for example: during a cancer survey even in the open-air swimming resort. The system was developed by applying a User Centered Design including four levels: paper mock-up studies, low-fi prototypes, hi-fi prototypes and the system in real life. Scientifically this work provided insights into the technical possibilities, Human-Computer Interaction and Usability Engineering, user acceptance in the clinical field and the possible optimization potential of clinical workflows. Keywords: Human-Computer Interaction & Usability Engineering, Mobile Computing, Information Interfaces, Input Devices and Strategies (mobile touchscreen), Screen design, User-centered Design & Development (UCD). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We face the support to finding the way in an unknown building, such as hospital or city-hall for people with special needs (reduced vision, cognitive disabilities, physical disabilities), which forces not only to find the way, but to find the suitable one for specific capacities. Our goal is to enhance accessibility to public services and leisure in an autonomous and easier way. The system design uses building and personal context to find an adequate way to his/her destiny. Then it will guide the person through the way, monitoring the route followed, re-conducting when needed and giving the chance to change destination. This paper shows a brief description of the system and the two evaluation stages performed with their conclusions. A multidisciplinary team with engineers, gerontologists, psychologist and two special education schools are involved in specification, development and evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An e-healthcare service with ubiquitous sensor network (USN) for the disabled and elderly people was studied, considering the current technology as well as forthcoming technology and service in the ubiquitous computing and networking environment. We introduce the USN for e-healthcare service for the disabled and elderly in smart environments. Beyond e-healthcare service, as a primitive application for ubiquitous healthcare service using mobile Internet, we studied the real-time health-monitoring service for the disabled and elderly people with an inexpensive and effective Web server. We considered the health-monitoring sensors in the wrist phone, as a future product for ubiquitous healthcare service. For quality of service (QoS), we studied an evaluation scheme for U-healthcare service for the disabled in smart environments, considering diversity of technologies and services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a system for the hands-free control of a computer, using a PC camera to track head movements, then translating these movements into cursor movements onto a computer screen. The proposed system is an alternative for people with spinal cord injuries and other special needs. It can be run on a standard Windows platform and makes use of a standard USB video camera to track head movements compared to other commercial hands-free products, which use special devices. Also, it can be applied to not only the disabled but also for any users operating common devices, such as ATMs, vending machines, or pay phones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on assistive technology for impaired and elderly is of great importance and it is intended to grow as society undergoes an age shift in its population. Research on assistive technology leads to the development of aids for individual users. These aids can be made more or less autonomous in order to fit an individuals specific needs. Aids can be designed not only to please a user from a technical perspective, but also from a psychological perspective. Based on knowledge about a user, from for example interviews, the design of an aid can be improved. We present a semi-autonomous wheelchair which can be controlled using head-mounted sensors. Control is also possible by sensors placed on the hand of a user. The wheelchair hand control was tested by a user and the feedback from the user is included. Through an interface suitable for specific users, the wheelchair can perform certain tasks autonomously. One such task is moving to a certain location pointed out by a user looking at a map of the surrounding which is presented on a computer screen. With a user centered perspective based on interviews, direct contact, and knowledge about users, we show results for improving the design of assistive technology.This work was partly funded by EU and Interreg IIIA, Nord. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Babies are human beings who cannot satisfy their necessities by themselves, they completely depend of cares and attentions by adults. The cry is the natural media babies use to express their needs. Several studies have demonstrated that cry is a useful tool to determine the different emotional and physiological states from an infant, and in addition to make medical diagnoses of diseases related to the central nervous system. This work presents the analysis and extraction of characteristics from infant crying for its automatic classification with Support Vector Machines. Several classification tasks were done, working in the identification of pain, hunger, and deafness levels with results of up to 96 % of correct classification. Besides some results, we show the implementation and experimentation done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deaf and hard of hearing people can find it difficult to follow speech through hearing alone or to take notes when lip-reading or watching a sign-language interpreter. Notetakers summarise what is being said while qualified sign language interpreters with a good understanding of the relevant higher education subject content are in very scarce supply. Real time captioning/transcription is not normally available in UK higher education because of the shortage of real time stenographers. Lectures can be digitally recorded and replayed to provide multimedia revision material for students who attended the class and a substitute learning experience for students unable to attend. Automatic Speech Recognition can provide real time captioning directly from lecturers' speech in classrooms but it is difficult to obtain accuracy comparable to stenography. This paper describes the development of a system that enables editors to correct errors in the captions as they are created by Automatic Speech Recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last decade we have attended to an impressive development of mobile communications which, unfortunately, deaf and hearing-impaired community cannot (in principle) take advantage of. In order to favour this people to take part in the Information Society, we have designed and developed some PC-based systems and applications which will provide several text-based services to them, such as real time and text mode communication between mobile text telephones and those connected to the PSTN or direct accessibility to Urgency Call Centers. We emphasize in this article the advantages of the software design methodology followed, which has led to the implementation of two systems which have shown to be robust and versatile in operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper described a bi-directional translating system between Japanese and Japanese Sign Language and two experiments conducted to clarify necessary conditions for displaying easy-to-read animation of a person model speaking sign language synthesized by the system. In Experiment 1 hearing-impaired and hearing subjects judged identity of a pair of animation. Resolution and frame rate had an main effect against correct answer rate. While the hear ing had tendency to watch the whole body of the model, the hearing-impaired focused their attention chiefly on handshape and movement. In Experiment 2 the hearing-impaired read signs on animation. For correct reading above 90 % sign animation needed to be displayed with more than 10 x 8 cm, 113 x 90 pixels and 8 f/sec. This condition was much relaxed compared with that in Experiment 1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluation tests of sign communication with delayed video are reported and the effect of delay on the communication is discussed. The authors constructed the delayed sign dialogue experimental system. Five kinds of tasks were assigned to deaf subjects and videos of performing the task with various delay times were recorded. By analyzing the data, sign communications was found to be more tolerant of the delay time than voice communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speech and/or hearing impaired people have difficulties with voice communication. In case of face-to-face conversation they can find a common communication channel (e.g. sign language, paper, etc.), but without an appropriate system they are unable to talk over the phone. The goal of the present study is to introduce the design and development steps of a system for vocally and/or hearing impaired people, which helps them to communicate via telephone with any person. Speech output is realized by text-to-speech (TTS) technology and speech input is provided by automatic speech recognition (ASR). The visual and the speech user interfaces enable users on both side of the phone line (a speech and hearing impaired person at one end, a non-speech-and-hearing-disabled person at the other end) to communicate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Composition Corrector (CC) is an online, browser-based tool that detects and corrects grammatical errors in written English composition. CC is aimed at deaf high school and college students who are fluent in a language such as American Sign Language but are not necessarily fluent in written English. The student types an English sentence into the browser window and receives an immediate analysis of grammatical errors and the corrections in standard English. The writing skills of deaf students are reported to be significantly poorer than those of their hearing peers, with attendant educational, professional, and income disparities with the hearing population. CC is conceived as a tool to present students to best advantage in an academic or professional setting. It acknowledges a social as well as educational need in that strong English composition skills are companions to independence, quality of life, and professional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have developed a video hand segmentation tool which can help with generating hands ground truth from sign language image sequences. This tool may greatly facilitate research in the area of sign language recognition. In this tool, we offer a semi automatic scheme to assist with the localization of hand pixels, which is important for the purpose of recognition. A candidate hand generator is applied by using the mean shift image segmentation algorithm and a greedy seeds growing algorithm. After a number of hand candidates is generated, the user can reduce the candidates by simple mouse clicks. The tool also provides a hand tracking function for faster processing and a face detection function for groundtruthing non manual signals. In addition, we provided a two-passes groundtruthing scheme unlike other tools that only does one-pass. Our first pass processing is automatic and does not need user interaction. The experiment results demonstrate that based on the first pass's result, one can groundtruth 10,000+ frames of sign language within 8 hours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a communication support system in a classroom environment for the hearing impaired. This system detects the questioner, monitors his/her sign language with a video camera, and displays the video on a monitor at the front of the lecture room. Although other students cannot see the questioner's sign language directly, they can see the questioner on the monitor. The system locates the questioner by detecting a raised hand. Once the system locates the questioner, it zooms in by controlling the direction and the zoom parameters of the camera and captures his/her image. We implemented the system and conducted an experiment during a real lecture. As a result, we achieved a raised hand extraction rate of 70%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes a method of synthesizing sign language samples for training HMM. First face and hands regions are detected, and then features of sign language are extracted. For generating HMM, training data are automatically synthesized from a limited number of actual samples. We focus on the common hand shape in different word. The database hand shapes is generated and the training data of each word is synthesized by replacing the same shape in the database. Experiments using real image sequences are shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hearing impaired have always had difficulties learning to speak because their auditory feedback is either damaged or missing. The SpeechMaster software package provides real-time visual feedback as a substitute for this. Within the package the forms of the feedback are clear and simple. For instance in the first phase of vowel learning the software uses an effective phoneme recognizer providing real-time visual feedback. In this case flickering letters indicate correctness where the brightness of the letters is proportional to the output of speech recognizer. These unambiguous solutions help the hearing impaired to learn the correct association between the phoneme - grapheme pairs or the connection between their own articulation and the speech signal they produce. Also, with the aid of the computer, children can practice without the need for the continuous presence of the teacher. This is a significant step in the education of the hearing impaired as their traditional therapy includes a long and tedious fixation phase. Furthermore, the use of computer exercises, which are popular with children, speeds up the learning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To make sign language animation used as instructions for stomach X-ray examination easier for hearing impaired patients to understand, the authors identified problems in currently used sign animation and then created a new animation to solve these problems. The objective of this study was to compare how easy to understand the new animation was over previous animation by conducting evaluation tests. The evaluation tests were conducted with 32 hearing impaired persons. Results indicated that the new animation improved comprehension approximately 8% over previous animation. Keywords: sign language animation, sign language interpretation, hearing impaired patient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spanish Sign Language Dictionary (DILSE) is one of the first truly bilingual (Spanish Sign Language-Spanish) electronic dictionaries for the deaf community. The properties of this format are perfectly matched to a visual language such as sign language, which uses space as a means of expression. Additionally, two-way searches for word entries are possible from either Spanish or signs. The signs have been previously classified according to sign language-based linguistic criteria. Furthermore, the system presented here includes different geographical varieties of Spanish Sign Language. The Spanish National Confederation of Deaf People (CNSE), the ONCE Foundation, the Institute of Migrations and Social Services (IMSERSO) and the Centre of Computing and Communications Technology Transfer (CETTICO) have participated in this R&D project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a proposal of the universal coding system for the sign languages. It is expected to resolve the problems of the entangled notational systems for the sign language. The structure and rules are proposed and some application models for Japanese Sign Language are shown The USC is constructed with several strata, lexical, sentence, phonological, morphological, regional and other levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High speed connections have enabled video-based communication and given deaf and hard-of-hearing people the opportunity to rely on the visual modality to better communicate with each other and with hearing people. However a number of obstacles still have to be removed to make this technology really accessible for all: technical expertise for operating a computer, lack of compatibility, poorly integrated services,... This papers describes an ongoing project for providing a better accessibility by (1) supporting multiple kind of user terminals (such as PC, videophone, TV, mobile phone) in an interoperable way; (2) with a simple and user friendly interface, (3) giving access to a number of related services such as directories, video message box, relay centre and signed news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The talking-head telephone, Synface, is a lip-reading support for people with hearing-impairment. It has been tested by 49 users with varying degrees of hearing-impaired in UK and Sweden in lab and home environments. Synface was found to give support to the users, especially in perceiving numbers and addresses and an enjoyable way to communicate. A majority deemed Synface to be a useful product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]