tuniSigner: A Virtual Interpreter to Learn Sign Writing

Technological advances, including the use of virtual reality, have contributed significantly to improving and expanding learning opportunities for people with hearing impairments over the past few years. For example, 3D human characters or avatars have succeeded in becoming widely used by deaf learners as an effective way of providing information in sign language. Indeed, these digital signers can be generated from text, speech, live-signing and even from sign language notations. In this context, we present in this paper tuniSigner, an avatar-based system able to display and interpret sign language transcriptions automatically, in the well known SignWriting system, via the visual-gestural modality. The main objective of the present is to help the hearing impaired learners to read and write from a written form of their native language. Reading and writing in their signed language could be a good starting point for improving their academic performance.