An Efficient Tool for Learning Bengali Sign Language for Vocally Impaired People

摘要

The sign language is the only mean of communication for the vocally impaired people throughout the world. This is possible for a vocally impaired person who has undergone special training. In Bangladesh, learning sign language is a hard job because not enough institutes are available for teaching sign language, and not enough supporting materials or tools are available online. In this paper, an efficient learning tool was developed for vocally impaired people of Bangladesh to learn Bengali alphabet, without any assistance or supervision of another person. The system consists of a computer software and a special sensor-fitted glove. The software shows various letters with associated signs to the user. The user can imitate the sign using the glove, while the system can detect the bending of the fingers and tilt of the hand and check whether the sign is correct or not. A between-subject experiment with 18 vocally impaired people were conducted to assess the performance and user experience of the proposed learning tool. The study results showed that the tool is effective for the vocally impaired people to learn Bengali alphabet comparing to the traditional learning approach. The results also showed the developed system is efficient, useful and acceptable to users.