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The goal of ViSiCAST is to improve the quality of life of
Europe's deaf citizens by widening their access to services
and facilities enjoyed by the community at large. The project
identifies a number of aspects of life where the integration
of deaf individuals in society would be improved if sign language
communication was available: access to public services, commercial
transactions and entertainment, learning and leisure opportunities
including broadcast and interactive television and the e-commerce
and the World Wide Web.
The chosen medium of communication for the deaf community
is the European deaf languages and hence services and facilities
must be made accessible through these recognised European
languages. The core of the project will build and strengthen
partner's detailed understanding of the richness and complex
structure of these languages. At the same time it will develop
complex computer linguistic methods to convert contextual
speech and text to machine readable form fto generate appropriate
intelligible sign.
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European legislation (being implemented
within the statutes of the Member States) now requires that
access to all services is made equally available to all citizens.
This will mean that a very large number of companies, offering
very diverse services, will have to address the issue of communication
with sensory impaired people. At present, such communication
relies heavily upon human sign language interpreters, but there
can never be enough of these skilled individuals to be present
at every face-to-face interaction or even to sign a large proportion
of broadcast television. |
