The video menu at Dialogue Cafe teaches hearing people how to order a drink using sign language. The video menu at Dialogue Cafe teaches hearing people how to order a drink using sign language. 'Coffee is just the excuse': the deaf-run cafe where hearing people sign to order W esley Hartwell raised his fists to the barista and shook them next to his ears. He then lowered his fists, extended his thumbs and little fingers, and moved them up and down by his chest, as though milking a cow. Finally, he laid the fingers of one hand flat on his chin and flexed his wrist forward.

One of the continuing challenges of Human Computer Interaction research is the full inclusion of people with special needs into the digital world. In particular, this crucial category includes people that experiences some kind of limitation in exploiting traditional information communication channels. One immediately thinks about blind people, and several researches aim at addressing their needs. On the contrary, limitations suffered by deaf people are often underestimated. This often the result of a kind of ignorance or misunderstanding of the real nature of their communication difficulties. This chapter aims at both increasing the awareness of deaf problems in the digital world, and at proposing the project of a comprehensive solution for their better inclusion. As for the former goal, we will provide a bird's-eye presentation of history and evolution of understanding of deafness issues, and of strategies to address them. As for the latter, we will present the design, implementation and evaluation of the first nucleus of a comprehensive digital framework to facilitate the access of deaf people into the digital world.

Deaf people are more heavily a ffected by the digital divide than many would expect. Moreover, most a ccessibility guidelines address ing their needs just deal with captioning and audio-content transcriptio n. However, this approach to the problem does not consider that deaf people have big troubles with vocal languages, even in their written form. At present, only a few organizations, like W3C, produced guidelines deal ing with one of their most distinctive expressions: Sign Language (SL). SL is, in fact, the visual -gestural language used by many deaf people to communicate with each other. The present work aims at supporting e-learning user experience (e - LUX) for these speci fic users by enhancing the accessibility of content and container services. In particular, we propose preliminary solutions to tailor activities which can be more fruitful when performed in one's own " native" language, which for most deaf people, especially younger ones, is represen ted by national SL.

In the era of AI-driven language technologies, there is a growing demand for the participation and leadership of deaf communities in sign language technology development, often framed as co-creation. This paper, developed through collaborative and iterative dialogue between the authors with data from informal participant observations, examines the involvement of the European Union of the Deaf in two EU Horizon 2020 projects, EASIER and SignON. These projects aimed to develop mobile translation applications between signed and spoken languages, bringing together predominantly hearing, non-signing technology experts with predominantly hearing sign language academics and organizations representing deaf end users in large multi-partner consortia. While co-creation is sometimes presented as the best or required way to do research or even as emancipatory, it frequently masks systemic issues of power imbalances and tokenism. Drawing from EUD's experiences of these projects, we highlight several inconvenient truths of co-creation, and propose seven lessons for future initiatives: recognizing deaf partners' invisible labour as work, managing expectations about technologies, cripping co-creation processes, exploring alternative methods to mitigate co-creation fatigue, seeking intersectional feedback, ensuring co-creation is not just virtue signalling, and fostering deaf leadership in AI sign language research. We argue for co-creation as a transformative activity that fundamentally alters the status quo and levels the playing field. This necessitates increasing the number of deaf researchers and enhancing AI literacy among deaf communities. Without these critical transformative actions, co-creation risks merely paying lip service to deaf communities.

Growing research in sign language recognition, generation, and translation AI has been accompanied by calls for ethical development of such technologies. While these works are crucial to helping individual researchers do better, there is a notable lack of discussion of systemic biases or analysis of rhetoric that shape the research questions and methods in the field, especially as it remains dominated by hearing non-signing researchers. Therefore, we conduct a systematic review of 101 recent papers in sign language AI. Our analysis identifies significant biases in the current state of sign language AI research, including an overfocus on addressing perceived communication barriers, a lack of use of representative datasets, use of annotations lacking linguistic foundations, and development of methods that build on flawed models. We take the position that the field lacks meaningful input from Deaf stakeholders, and is instead driven by what decisions are the most convenient or perceived as important to hearing researchers. We end with a call to action: the field must make space for Deaf researchers to lead the conversation in sign language AI.

USING A computer used to mean bashing away at a keyboard. Then it meant tapping on a touchscreen. Increasingly, it means simply speaking. Over 100m devices powered by Alexa, Amazon's voice assistant, rest on the world's shelves. Apple's offering, Siri, processes 25bn requests a month. By 2025 the market for such technology could be worth more than $27bn.

VarsityGenie will be hosting its first sign-language webinar to uplift the deaf community through technology-based skills on 14 October via Microsoft Teams. The student leadership platform was established by the 26-year-old Durban University of Technology (DUT) information and communication technology (ICT) masters student Fanie Ndlovu, who is passionate about developing the skills of young people in communities and townships. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) there are 466 million people across the world that live with disabling hearing loss, which equates to more than 5% of the world's population. WHO also estimated that by 2050, more than 900 million people will have disabling hearing loss. Majority of these individuals live in low- to middle-income countries where they do not have access to the appropriate hearing care services.

After more than five months of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, White House briefings and press conferences still lack an American Sign Language interpreter. On Monday, a week after President Trump resumed his daily briefings, the National Association of the Deaf filed a lawsuit against the White House arguing that the continued refusal to include an interpreter violates the Americans With Disabilities Act. "All 50 states' governors have provided in-frame American Sign Language ('ASL') interpretation during public briefings regarding the pandemic," the lawsuit notes. "President Trump, however, does not. He now stands alone in holding televised briefings regarding the Covid-19 pandemic without ever having provided any ASL Interpretation."

Music rattled the windows of the one-room schoolhouse that was now serving as a dance floor for nearly the entire village, a population of about 100 people. Masato, a masticated yuca drink, was passed around the room. I tried to refuse it as it came to me -- I had already shared an entire pot and was feeling woozy from both the alcohol and my full stomach. But this was a celebration and another bowl was pressed into my hands. The party was the last night of my first field trip to the Amazon in 2012.

Companies that aim to transform how we recycle, make websites more accessible for people who are Deaf, and give the public a greater say in how their towns change have joined a Microsoft programme that uses AI to tackle challenges in society. The latest AI for Good cohort, based in London, contains 12 start-ups from across Britain who will be given access to Microsoft technology, resources and expertise that will help them develop and launch their products and solutions. The programme is run by Microsoft and the Social Tech Trust. It is open to entrepreneurs from the UK who are developing a solution that focuses on one of four areas – AI for Earth, AI for Accessibility, AI for Humanitarian Action and AI for Cultural Heritage. By helping grow innovative ideas into established companies, Microsoft and the Social Tech Trust hope to create a more sustainable and accessible world.