Sign Language in the Interface: Access for Deaf Signers

This chapter introduces the reader to several important and interrelated issues in deafness, language literacy, and computer accessibility. Throughout this discussion, the chapter will motivate the use of sign language technologies in the interface of computing systems to improve their accessibility for deaf signers. 1 The chapter discusses the advantages of sign language interfaces for deaf signers (for a discussion of other technologies for deaf and hard of hearing users, see, eg, Hanson, 2007), and highlights important applications of this technology, as well as the challenges that arise when integrating sign language technologies into real applications. Many of the sign language generation and understanding technologies discussed in this chapter are still in the research stage of development, and so another focus of this chapter is to explain what makes this technology challenging to build, survey the progress of the field, and discuss current issues that researchers are tackling. This chapter will help the reader understand what technologies are currently available and what direction the field is expected to take in the coming decades. A question that might first arise is why such interfaces are needed. By and large, interactions with computers involve