Bridging the Communication Gap: With Real Time Sign Language Translation

Communication is broadly defined as the process of interaction among human beings where they can share their thoughts and ideas to convey a message to each other. But people with hearing and speech impairment whose primary means of communication is sign language and hand gestures, find it difficult at times to interact with others who are not privy with this language thus resulting in a communication gap. The fact is sign language is fundamentally different from English or any other spoken language. There are different forms of gestures like hand gestures, which include one or two hands, facial expressions, body or other subtle movements. Also, hand gestures are of two different types: static and dynamic gestures. A static gesture refers to some hand pose and configuration, represented by a single image while a dynamic gesture refers to a moving gesture, represented by a sequence of images. Due to the complexity of dynamic gestures, most researches in this domain are focused either on static gestures/postures, or small sets of dynamic gestures. To this end, this paper aims at developing a Sign Language Recognition system which can interpret and translate dynamic sign languages to their equivalent texts, to help the hearing-impaired communicate with the hearing society conveniently, thereby diminishing the communication barrier.