Smart Interactive System for the Hearing and Speech Impaired

I. Introduction

Deaf and dumb people communicate using sign language. Sign language is the most natural language for a deaf and dumb person because even when a child is born he learns gesture until he is been able to speak. Sign language consists of gestures like facial expressions, body postures, and primarily hand gestures, combination of these make a particular sign. There are more than 300 sign languages present all across the globe. According to WHO (World Health Organization), over 5% of the world’s population suffers from hearing or speech loss (3playmedia, n.d.). India is the second-largest country to have more than 63 million people who are suffering from full deafness or partial deafness including 50lakh children (Hindustan Times, n.d.). Details of hearing and speech impaired people is given in table 1. Their inability to communicate with hearing people holds them back and creates a large gap between deaf society and the rest of the world. Not every person around them understands sign language due to which these people struggle to get proper health, education, and jobs.

Health care is the basic necessity that everyone should have. But due to the communication gap between deaf society and hearing people they struggle to get proper healthcare. It is also not feasible for a deaf or dumb person to have a human translator with them all the time. So, there is a need for an automatic sign language translator system that can translate sign language to a form that can be easily understood by fully-abled or normal people. An automatic sign language recognition system helps deaf and dumb people to interact with computer devices and express their feelings and thoughts which can be further converted to a human-readable form or speech as well.

Some of the common challenges faced by deaf and dumb people are: