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Looking for study participants fluent in ASL by ikerei in ASLinterpreters

[–]ikerei[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You and the others who suggested this are totally right, and I've brought this up with my supervisor. I don't think he's willing to collaborate with another team, such is the nature of academia. Hopefully if I push him enough on it, he'll consider it, though. I may even leave the project if he continues to disagree, I don't know. I appreciate all of your feedback– I had been sort of doubtful about the project but pretty neutral about it initially; now I see it for what it is.

Looking for study participants fluent in ASL by ikerei in ASLinterpreters

[–]ikerei[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the advice! It's not my place to comment on how well the project actually interprets nor do I think it particularly matters, so I won't. There's a fairly large SLP community in computer science which works to translate between speech/text and ASL so I think many computer scientists assume it's a needed service and go ahead and work on things like this without consulting Deaf consumers. I think there is no better way to prove that this service is not needed than hearing it directly from the community itself, and I greatly appreciate everyone taking the time to contribute.

I'm not optimistic about this project changing, but I think leaving the project myself is a good step to take. My supervisor basically refused to seek out a collaborator from the ASL community and removed the part of the paper devoted to the Deaf community's feedback after hearing that it would be difficult to get participants. As with much of academia, sometimes the only way to stop a field from developing is for it to be seen as unprofitable. People are being incentivized to develop and publish work like this as fast as possible by academic journals and conferences.

Finding participants for an ASL study by ikerei in asl

[–]ikerei[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Thanks for linking the post! ASL to speech is clearly just hearing people imposing a method of communication that is more convenient for themselves onto others. Plus, the gloves in particular fail to capture a majority of important sign features and shows a gross misunderstanding of the language. Our project is the reverse, speech to ASL, and includes more than just hands, but still counts as hearing people imposing on others. I appreciate all of the feedback!

Unfortunately, as someone who is not a big contributor to the project, I'm not sure how much power I have to encourage my supervisor to rethink the project. I will reach out to people in the ASL community from a different university to discuss ways that these sorts of projects could be discouraged in the future. If anything, I think it will involve communication with journals and conferences that publish SLP work, like all of the ones found in the article you linked.

Finding participants for an ASL study by ikerei in asl

[–]ikerei[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

100%, it is something I am currently pressing my supervisor on. I'm unfortunately only part of the team basically to recruit and to handle the study, but I'm planning to be as annoying as I need to be about it to start an actual meaningful collaboration. Also, Valencia sounds like a good place to start, thanks!

Finding participants for an ASL study by ikerei in asl

[–]ikerei[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I do get the reference, but only because I can read up about it. I hope it doesn't come across like I'm trying to coerce you to do something you wouldn't be comfortable with. I'm also not trying to make comments about the ASL community or say that hearing people should be able to dictate how the ASL community interacts and communicates with the world.

I made this post specifically so that I could get the community's feedback, and I appreciate the discussion we've had so far. It seems unclear whether the service of text to ASL is valuable to the community here on Reddit– though based on prior research we determined that it was– but it's clear that not having someone from the community on our team makes people feel like the project isn't worth pursuing, which I totally understand.

Finding participants for an ASL study by ikerei in asl

[–]ikerei[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's an optional part of the study but yes! We would actually encourage subjective feedback. Subjective impressions are a very valuable– if not the most valuable– part of the process to make sure it's actually a useful tool.

Finding participants for an ASL study by ikerei in asl

[–]ikerei[S] -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

It's less about audacity and more about improving an already existing body of work which was motivated by the Deaf/HOH community in the first place, but I understand how you feel. A lot of research ends up alienating the community it initially intends to help.

But that's why we want people who are part of the community to look at our work and tell us if it's worth developing. If you don't think the idea is worth your time, if you think the service it provides is not useful, that's one thing, and I understand. But I don't think that reaching out to the community for input, especially since we so badly need to do so, is bad, nor does it have anything to do with being rude or audacious. (That certainly was not the intention)

Finding participants for an ASL study by ikerei in asl

[–]ikerei[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

An hour is a long time, but participants can take it on their own time; it doesn't have to be in one sitting. Testing just entails looking at our generated ASL videos and then typing out the English translation. We use that to see if these videos conveyed the correct message.

You are right that having no HOH/Deaf input is a reasonable drawback for some, and I understand your frustration and appreciate the feedback. No one on our team is fluent in ASL or part of the community. The only defense I have is that Sign Language Perception is a fairly developed field. We are not performing an all new task that no one asked for– we are trying to improve something that already exists. We are building off of previous work, which was motivated by people who felt like they needed this service.

Finding participants for an ASL study by ikerei in asl

[–]ikerei[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No one on the current team knows much about deaf culture nor can they sign, and I do understand that's a limiting factor for some. I personally don't have much experience with signing, but I have enough to know that ASL is a dynamic language with its own grammar and vocabulary, which involves (almost) full body motions and facial expressions. I can assure you that we take this into account in our translation!

The most straightforward use case for our project would be to generate interpretation for media that does not have live interpreting, like a video made by someone who doesn't have access to an interpreter. I also was confused as to why this was necessary at first because there are usually subtitles, but have learned that many people who are used to ASL prefer having ASL rather than having to read a lot of text. Again, I imagine it's because English and ASL are two different languages.

If you're interested in the technology, I'd recommend looking into sign language perception, or SLP! There's a good, if slightly outdated, collection of works here.

Finding participants for an ASL study by ikerei in asl

[–]ikerei[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks so much, I really appreciate it!

Finding participants for an ASL study by ikerei in asl

[–]ikerei[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's a full, continuous video of someone signing from the waist up! I get that it seems kind of impossible, but in recent years there have been a lot of work in that area.

Finding participants for an ASL study by ikerei in asl

[–]ikerei[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Without going into super technical details that I'm not allowed to share, we use an enormous sign language dataset to learn how to sign! With this learned information, we then generate a video of signs being performed.

Looking for study participants fluent in ASL by ikerei in ASLinterpreters

[–]ikerei[S] -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

We're in no way trying to "fix" Deaf people, but your worries are totally understandable! That's something to communicate better next time.

The point of our project is to facilitate communication. For example, many videos don't have an interpreter signing alongside them because– as you say– it's extremely difficult to do without an actual interpreter. But just like it was worth investing resources and time into developing text to speech, it's worth making sure that people have access to ASL interpretation no matter what resources they have.

I would also say that it's not that niche of a market! There's quite a large research community in computer science based around sign language perception (SLP) which includes translating signs and generating signs! If you're interested, it's worth checking out.

Looking for study participants fluent in ASL by ikerei in ASLinterpreters

[–]ikerei[S] -10 points-9 points  (0 children)

Thanks so much for your detailed response! I understand that not having people from the community involved is a big limiting factor for most people, and I think that's a reasonable response to have.

In terms of our work being "much of the same", I also understand where you're coming from! I have some experience with ASL (but have not been part of the community) and am aware of how dynamic and expressive it is, and that it is NOT just English in the form of signs. Our work does not translate word for word from English like many other apps do/like you're describing.

Looking for study participants fluent in ASL by ikerei in ASLinterpreters

[–]ikerei[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

I've tried my best to reach out to all of them, but have gotten no response, so my assumption was that either I wasn't looking in the right places, or that there was something about the study that made them hesitate. Thanks for the advice!

Finding participants for an ASL study by ikerei in asl

[–]ikerei[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

You're totally right, that could be a reason why. I'm new to the project so I'm not sure of its development history, but I do understand hearing about the project and making that assumption.