The Sardinia Region, in order to promote the social inclusion of people who are deaf and have hearing loss, has carried out an initial project IPOACUSIA “Innovate, Inform, Participate – New Methodologies for the Communication of People with Hearing Loss” (2020-2022), promoting the testing of automatic translation tools for LIS (Italian Sign Language) based on artificial intelligence models.
The project in continuation IPOACUSIA2 is intended to foster interpersonal communication within regional and municipal offices necessary to ensure the active involvement of the beneficiaries of the interventions and to enable the social and health administrations to take charge, multidimensional assessment, definition of the project budget and preparation of the personalized program. The directions of the experimentation underlying the proposal are the innovative communication tools Information and Communications Technology (ICT) designed to facilitate the dissemination of automatic interpretation services of Italian sign language (LIS) and automatic notification modes, also supported by wearable devices on modern smartphones.
The overall aim of the project is to complete the path already started for effective use of automatic LIS recognition in reducing communication barriers between PA service personnel and deaf people aimed at improving accessibility to public services. The technologies and activities listed below will form the basic framework on which to develop digital services (in the cloud): 1. improvement of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) computational performance in automatic LIS recognition; 2. significant extension of the number of LIS signs recognized by the digital system; 3. realization and configuration of a WEB client-server video streaming platform; 4. development of a virtual assistant (avatar) capable of interpreting LIS vocabulary phrases made available to the LIS automatic recognition system.
The project includes specific and ongoing internal and external communication and dissemination of results with the involvement of stakeholders in the area.
