Millions of people across the world make use of sign language daily to communicate their thoughts and needs; in fact, ASL is the 6th most commonly used language here in the United States. For people who do not know ASL, however, everyday situations involving the deaf can be problematic: Imagine being at a grocery store where a deaf person is asking you for assistance in locating the produce aisle. If you didn't know ASL, the question may quickly become a frustrating game of charades. Two years ago, an application was prototyped to translate ASL in realtime using nothing more than the camera on your smartphone. While the technology has proven itself viable, the machine learning algorithm it uses needs a variety of data from which to learn new hand gestures.
The ASL Public Data Drive was created to get this data from anyone who could sign and submit a photo. That's where your support is needed!
1. Take a picture of you signing a sign in ASL, then submit the photo using the uploader to the right.
2. Make sure to name the photo with the name of the sign you're signing. If the sign already exists, add a number to the end of it. For example: cooking1.png or hello5.jpg.
It's that simple! Feel free to submit as many photos as you want of the same hand sign at different angles or of different hand signs. If for any reason you cannot submit photos using the uploader, send them to loganapple@hotmail.com. All the data will be collected to construct a library of signs that the app can translate. Once the app has passed proper field testing, it will be released to the public for anyone to use.