Video phones to transmit sign language soon
By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 19 August 2010, 00:12 IST
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Video phones to transmit sign language soon
Bangalore: The first-ever mobile devices that can effectively transmit American Sign Language via compressed video over a 3G cellular network is expected to hit the market very soon. Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle are building are working on the device, reports Matt Hamblen from Computerworld. Optimizing the compressed video for sign language is the main challenge and by doing that it can be transmitted on a 3G network, instead of requiring faster 4G network speeds, according to a report published on the university's Web site . The engineers have increased image quality around faces and hands used in ASL, while still delivering intelligible sign language via video at speeds of 30 Kbit/sec. A three-week initial trial of the MobileASL tool on older phones equipped with cameras for video chat are at its end stages, although the software is designed to work on a range of smartphones and other mobile devices. The field test was conducted with the help of 11 students in a UW summer academy for people who are deaf or hard of hearing and are interested in computing careers. They made 200 calls with the Mobile ASL software, each averaging 90 seconds, and got generally positive results. A larger field study on MobileASL is planned for the winter. UW engineers estimate that MobileASL will use one-tenth the bandwidth of the iPhone 4's FaceTime videoconferencing application. MobileASL could work with the iPhone 4 and other smartphones with a front-facing camera. Eve Riskin, a UW professor of electrical engineering, said the study was the first to assess how deaf people in the U.S. use video phones. Even if a user of MobileASL has access to 4G wireless, the software will help extend battery life and eventually lower costs, the researchers said.

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