RE: [EXTERNAL] Conversational / Natural Language Interfaces / Interactive agent accessibility wiki update

Thanks, I’ll have a read. It’s a useful paper to have next time someone claims to be working on an English to BSL translator.

Using a cartoonish avatar to circumvent the uncanny valley and signers in motion capture suits allows you to ‘record’ and ‘play back’ the signs though. It is very similar in utility to a sign language video but may have some benefits (such as potentially a lower bandwidth). Sign language generation to an acceptable level has many barriers but this would be more pre-recorded phrases.

Cheers,

John

From: White, Jason J <jjwhite@ets.org>
Sent: 26 February 2021 13:46
To: John Paton <John.Paton@rnib.org.uk>; Joshue O'Connor <joconnor@w3.org>; RQTF <public-rqtf@w3.org>
Cc: Shadi Abou-Zahra <shadi@w3.org>
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] Conversational / Natural Language Interfaces / Interactive agent accessibility wiki update

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On sign language recognition, generation and translation, I would recommend this paper:
Bragg, D., Koller, O., Bellard, M., Berke, L., Boudreault, P., Braffort, A., ... & Ringel Morris, M. (2019, October). Sign language recognition, generation, and translation: An interdisciplinary perspective. In The 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (pp. 16-31).
My conclusion is that all of these areas remain challenging research problems.

From: John Paton <John.Paton@rnib.org.uk<mailto:John.Paton@rnib.org.uk>>
Sent: Friday, 26 February 2021 8:27
To: Joshue O'Connor <joconnor@w3.org<mailto:joconnor@w3.org>>; RQTF <public-rqtf@w3.org<mailto:public-rqtf@w3.org>>
Cc: Shadi Abou-Zahra <shadi@w3.org<mailto:shadi@w3.org>>
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] Conversational / Natural Language Interfaces / Interactive agent accessibility wiki update

Thanks Josh,

It looks like it’s shaping up.

The sign language augmentation to lip reading is called Cued Speech<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cuedspeech.co.uk%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cjjwhite%40ets.org%7C6e38241c8578419b541308d8da5a2ecd%7C0ba6e9b760b34fae92f37e6ddd9e9b65%7C0%7C0%7C637499428776287853%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=4kNW1qjMIM3fifBlgSGsW5ESB1j3KLZZRLNe82BDzeI%3D&reserved=0>
Alongside BSL video clips and diagrams we should probably mention sign language avatars as well. I’ve seen many attempts and no successes but I no longer work in the deafness sector so someone may have cracked the sign language avatar (or may be close to it). There may be reasons why an avatar is a better fit for a solution as well (the positioning data/sign encoding may be lower bandwidth than a video stream).

Cheers,

John

From: Joshue O'Connor <joconnor@w3.org<mailto:joconnor@w3.org>>
Sent: 26 February 2021 12:33
To: RQTF <public-rqtf@w3.org<mailto:public-rqtf@w3.org>>
Cc: Shadi Abou-Zahra <shadi@w3.org<mailto:shadi@w3.org>>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Conversational / Natural Language Interfaces / Interactive agent accessibility wiki update

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Hi all,

I've had a go at distilling the current state of play regarding our
scope discussion for our 'Voice/Smart/Interactive-agents/*' work.

https://www.w3.org/WAI/APA/wiki/Voice_agent_user_requirements<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2FWAI%2FAPA%2Fwiki%2FVoice_agent_user_requirements&data=04%7C01%7Cjjwhite%40ets.org%7C6e38241c8578419b541308d8da5a2ecd%7C0ba6e9b760b34fae92f37e6ddd9e9b65%7C0%7C0%7C637499428776297809%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=zvA3qCba4jrSF53bg37cxZy1Vwjq%2FMBiQl35P7JsiF8%3D&reserved=0>

While this still sits under an URL with Voice Agents in the title - I
think we will be moving from that at some stage soon *grin.

I think this discussion is really getting somewhere, and thanks to all
for excellent contributions on the recent RQTF call, and via the list.

Special shouts to Jason and John, for a fantastically useful thread that
I have plundered liberally. It still needs work, but I hope I have
broadly managed to capture your angles of vision, distill the discussion
and frame some research questions for our use.

Comments and further discussion very welcome.

Thanks

Josh
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