Converting speech into lip movements: a multimedia telephone for hard of hearing people

Presents the latest results of a research activity oriented to the development of a multimedia telephone for hard of hearing persons, based on the conversion of speech into graphic animation suitable to lipreading. The approach followed aims at the experimentation of a pilot telematic service for interpersonal communication, thus enlarging and improving the possibilities of social integration for hearing-impaired people. A preliminary prototype of the multimedia telephone has been integrated in a software demonstrator implemented on a Silicon Graphics workstation and is currently experimented in cooperation with FIADDA, the Italian Association of the parents of hearing-impaired children, to prove the feasibility of the system and the concrete possibility of providing new relay mediation services oriented to multimedia interpersonal communication for hard of hearing users. The developed algorithms rely on advanced methodologies in the field of nonlinear signal processing through neural network architectures, geometric modeling, computer graphics, and animation. Experimental results, although still preliminary, are encouraging and prove the system´s feasibility