Sinhala Sign Language Detection Approach for Deaf People Using Human Pose Estimation

People with disabilities have physical, sensory, cognitive, or behavioral health problems that limit their participation in activities and interaction with the environment. Deafness is one of the most common types of disability in society. Since verbal communication is impossible for the deaf, sign language is one of the most often used forms of communication among those disable people. However, a third party who is fluent in sign language is necessary for efficient communication. This research study proposed a sign language detector for Sinhala using Logistic Regression, Ridge Classifier, Random Forest, and Gradient Boosting algorithms with human pose estimation. The method used upper-body stance landmarks with 100 human pose videos and 40 widely used signals to extract features for body language classification. With an overall 86.75% success rate, this study is a major step toward improving deaf people's communication in Sri Lanka.