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Comment by nobodysfool | Hacker News Reader

This would be a good application for google glass (would only work one way). Other than that, I see no benefit over a simple pencil and paper for face to face communication, or a simple text chat for anything other than face to face. Although I will say that I have had text chats with deaf people before, and the text was definitely based off sign language (at times it was difficult to understand because the grammar is so different).

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Written language and reading is often not as fluent for deaf people as hearing: written English is based (loosely) on how the words sound after all, and if you've never heard them, you lose a lot of the useful tools to map between text and meaning. It's ironic that many people's first steps in sign language are to learn to sign the alphabet - as a tool it's almost useless for communicating with a deaf person.

Really? You see no benefit to video for communication instead of just typing in a chat window? What about facial expression and body language and every other reason people use video over audio regularly?

One benefit I see over a simple pencil and paper is the ability to translate between languages. I believe they showed an example of that in the video in which Chinese Sign Language was translated to English presumably on the fly.

Care to elaborate on the grammatical differences? You've got me curious now.

I cannot speak for other sign languages, but ASL uses a few different forms of word order -- Object, Subject, Verb is used a good bit. There are often rhetorical questions thrown in that are immediately answered by the signer. Facial expression is also very important to convey meaning.

A few examples: The signs for 'wish' and 'hungry' look the same. The difference is the facial expression.

If you wanted to sign, "All we want to do is eat your brains", the order would most likely be: 'We want do-what? Your brains eat.'

There is another form of signing called 'Signed English.' It borrows most of ASL's signs but puts them in standard english order. It has been a bit controversial in the past, though.

You also run into odd colloquialisms or regional signs. I'm not quite sure what to call them. A quick example is the word 'grass.' I learned the sign for grass but, for some reason, that sign means 'truck' where I live currently.

Anyway, I'm rambling. If you have any specific questions I can try to answer them.

edit Watch this youtube video with captions enabled. The video is captioned in english and in "ASL": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQYjZc7gKXc

Another good regional example is cities. Illinois signers have a specific sign for Chicago, for instance, whereas outside the state it's just finger spelled.

Sign is incredibly conceptual and has a large spatial component. This is definitely a cool step though.

Thanks a lot! That video especially is very illustrative. And Jonathan Coulton is great, although the concept of an "ASL song" kind of baffles me.

It seems odd at first, but 'ASL Songs' allow deaf and hard of hearing individuals to better experience that bit of culture (music.) Some folks are simply hard of hearing and may have trouble understanding what they're hearing.

ASL can be very expressive and can be an art form itself. There's a neat thing in the deaf culture called 'ABC Stories.'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBUdzGH6WbU

They are stories that are told using the alphabet finger spelling signs.

Here are some examples and discussion http://www.alldeaf.com/general-chat/15551-grammar-among-deaf... (although I can't speak to the reliability of the source)

Basically ASL (and other forms of sign language) use constructs and tense that don't necessarily translate well into specific words without lots of experience.

If text was such preferred and dominant ways of communication for deaf people then sign language would not have been invented in the first place. The fact that it is used more commonly to communicate with people with hearing disabilities tells me that this is interesting.

Besides this is a research project. Just goes off to show the potential a full body recognition platform such as Kinect can have.

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