Computer Assisted Communication for the Hearing Impaired in an Emergency Room Scenario

While there has been research on computerized communication facilities for those with hearing impairment, issues still remain. Current approaches utilize an avatar based approach which lacks the ability to adequately use facial expressions which are an integral aspect to the communication process in American Sign Language (ASL). Additionally, there is a lack of research into integrating a system to facilitate communication with the hearing impaired into a clinical environment, namely an emergency room admission scenario. This research aims to determine if an alternate approach of using videos created by humans in ASL can overcome the understandability barrier and still be usable in the communication process.