A virtual reality environment to support chat rooms for hearing impaired and to teach Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS)

Improving the way that totally or partially deaf people communicate with the world is a challenging task for our society. One way to improve their communication is to learn sign language, which is a visual language based on hand shapes, orientations, and movements of the hands, arms, or body, and fa...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ferreira Brega, Jose Remo, Rodello, Ildeberto Aparecido, Colombo Dias, Diego Roberto, Martins, Valeria Farinazzo, de Paiva Guimaraes, Marcelo
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Arm (anatomy)
Assistive technology
Auditory system
Avatars
Brazil
deaf people
End users
Facial
Gesture recognition
Hand (anatomy)
hearing-impaired
LIBRAS
Movements
online chat
sign language
Three dimensional
Three-dimensional displays
Virtual environments
Virtual reality
Visual
Online Access:Request full text
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Summary:Improving the way that totally or partially deaf people communicate with the world is a challenging task for our society. One way to improve their communication is to learn sign language, which is a visual language based on hand shapes, orientations, and movements of the hands, arms, or body, and facial expressions. This paper aims to present a 3D virtual reality environment to allow deaf users to communicate with each other in a real-time, synchronous, instantaneous fashion via an online chat room and to assist the teaching-learning process of Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS). A three-dimensional avatar was developed which can translate words or sentences from Portuguese to LIBRAS. It was performed two experiments to evaluate the communication via the chat room: (1) with chat history enabled (visible) and (2) with chat history disabled (invisible). These evaluations involved 30 end-users, which confirmed that the virtual environment as developed here is effective to distance classes.
ISSN:2161-5322
2161-5330
DOI:10.1109/AICCSA.2014.7073231