The development of language processing support for the ViSiCAST project

Abstract

ViSiCAST is a major new project funded by the European Union, aiming to provide improved access to services and facilities for deaf citizens through sign language presented by a virtual human, or avatar. We give here an outline of the project, and describe early work in the area of linguistics and language processing. This work covers two distinct but related areas: first, the development of an XML-compliant notation for deaf sign language gestures, which can be used to drive the signing avatar; and, second, the development of a framework supporting the translation of natural language text into this gesture-orientated notation.