Sisi helps handset owners to 'speak' to deaf

THOSE STRUGGLING to communicate with the deaf could benefit from Sisi (Say it, Sign it), a system developed as part of IBM's Extreme Blue initiative.

Sisi takes input from text and then converts it into BSL (British Sign Language). At present the technique relies on communications with a server but it could be ported to mobile handsets as a Java app.

The really clever bit is that the Extreme Blue team which developed Sisi has married the conversion process to existing avatar technology.

At present the technique relies on communications with a server. It then returns the results as a video clip of the avatar signing the desired message.

Sisi would enable handset users to key a message into their mobile phones and then display the results as a video clip with the avatar signing.

At present the team see the technology as being initially taken up for voicemails and instant messaging.

In future they also hope to support other languages besides English. µ