Study on the picture-mail system for people with hearing disabilities

摘要

In this paper, an e-mail system is studied for a new telecommunication tool for deaf people, by which it is made possible to transmit video files of sign-language on the Internet. Here we call such an e-mail system "picture mail". In this picture mail, use of redundancy reduction coding is essential for transmission of signed-language image. We implemented a prototype system using APC, which is one of the most advanced redundancy reduction coding methods of moving images. Subjective evaluation tests on performance of this prototype system were conducted and results show this picture mail seems very promising for a new telecommunication means for deaf people, although there are many technical issues left for further study to implement a practical and satisfactory picture mail system.