Signing Matters 1 in 1000 people become deaf before they have acquired speech and may always have a low reading age for written English. Sign is their natural language. British Sign Language (BSL) has its own grammar and linguistic structure that is not based on English which has a phonetic basis. For educational purposes, use is made of Sign Supported English (SSE), a simplified language that lacks the richness of a true natural language. Since deaf people do not necessarily find information easy to absorb in text, their access to services is restricted, despite the requirements of recent legislation. There is little support for digital services in sign. The Academic Challenge of Signing Signing presents an important and beneficial academic challenge as it provides a purely visual communications channel. Signing also exploits multiple modalities since gestures combine facial expressions with bodily and manual configuration and motion. Research at UEA addresses the linguistics of sign language, where little is documented about grammar and semantics. We are also exploring the generation of signing by developing notations for gesture, and using them to synthesise faithful animations of sign from notation. Further, there is work on capture of human motion via video and use of motion sensors, leading to attempts to recognise signs from motion data. Using Virtual Human Avatars Much of the work is based on animation of Virtual Humans, or Avatars. This work is partly in collaboration with Televirtual Ltd, a local television and multimedia company. Avatars bring the benefit of relatively compact representation of gestures. Since avatars exist as 3-D models, they support choice of the appearance, viewpoint, and size of the character. Techniques enable signing sequences captured from different sources to be blended seamlessly. Video provides high realism, but editing and blending of sequences is impractical. Recent projects at UEA include Simon the Signer, winner of two Royal Television Society Awards, and TESSA, winner of the BCS Gold Medal and top IT Award, undertaken within the EU ViSiCAST project. Broadcast: Transmitting Avatar Signing Research with the BBC, funded by the DTI, is developing robust techniques for capturing the facial and manual gestures of a live sign language interpreter. The motion data provides a low-bandwidth data stream that can be transmitted and used in the set top box to animate the “bones” of a 3-D signing avatar. The avatar character itself, and its position, size, pose, and lighting can be placed under user control. References : For further information see Virtual Human Signing Research at UEA John Glauert, Ralph Elliott, Richard Kennaway, Kevin Parsons, Judy Tryggvason, Vince Jennings School of Computing Sciences School of Computing Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK. Tel: ; Fax: ; Animation Stream Video Stream Capture System Set Top Box

Web Services: Weather Forecasts Although the weather forecast varies hour by hour, summary forecasts follow a predictable pattern. The domain can be fully described for a number of natural spoken languages and natural sign languages. A tool has been developed which allows a non-signer to build forecasts using standard weather phrases. These are then converted into text and sign for a number of languages. Our implementation covers English, BSL, Dutch, SLN (Sign Language of the Netherlands), and DGS (German Sign Language). A web plugin for Internet Explorer enables forecasts to be presented using sign sequences by seamless blending of captured phrases A live service is available in the Netherlands at and a service is planned in the UK hosted by the RNID. Applications of Virtual Human Signing John Glauert, Ralph Elliott, Richard Kennaway, Kevin Parsons, Judy Tryggvason, Vince Jennings School of Computing Sciences School of Computing Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK. Tel: ; Fax: ; Signing Research at UEA ViSiCAST: Virtual Signing, Capture, Animation, and Storage was an EU Framework V project involving: ITC, RNID, Televirtual Ltd, IvD (NL), University of Hamburg (DE), IRT (DE), INT (FR). The project developed practical systems for delivering virtual human signing over the internet. An example is the weather forecast system presented below. eSIGN: Signing on eGovernment Websites is an EU eContent Project involving: University of Hamburg (DE), RNID, Viataal (NL), Norfolk County Council, Televirtual Ltd, Systematics (DE). Building on ViSiCAST, eSIGN is extending applications to eGovernment websites in three countries. New content creation techniques are being developed. Signing Content on eGovernment Websites To enhance the usefulness of the internet for sign language users, especially for dealing with complex interactions, signed commentary will be provided for eGovernment forms. Help information in sign language will accompany information hosted by Norfolk County Council (uk), Viataal (NL), and Hamburg (DE). Content creation will be integrated with standard content management so that traditional multilingual support includes signing with only minimal change to web services logic. The eSIGN project focuses on content created by synthesis from notation, rather than motion capture. As a result, information can easily be updated without the need for an expensive capture session. Information of an ephemeral nature can be generated automatically and interactively. References: For further information see Summary: Mostly cloudy. Some rain in the east for a time. Rest of Today Largely dry, cloudy and fairly dull, but brightening up from northwest. Wind becoming gentle northwesterly. Maximum temperature 18 deg C (64 deg F). Issued:12:00, 03 Oct 2003