Procedia Computer Science 94 ( 2016 ) 295 – 301 Avail.docx

Procedia Computer Science 94 ( 2016 ) 295 – 301
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
1877-0509 © 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open
access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
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doi: 10.1016/j.procs.2016.08.044
ScienceDirect
The 11th International Conference on Future Networks and
Communications
(FNC 2016)
Assistive Technology for Deaf People Based on Android
Platform
Emad E. Abdallaha,* Ebaa Fayyoumi b
a,bFaculty of Information Technology, Hashemite University,
Zarqa 13115, Jordan
Abstract
Social communication is one of the most important pillars that
our society based on. It is well-known that the language is the
only way to communicate and interact with each other verbally
or non-verbal way. People with special needs are members of
this society and have the right to enjoy the communication with

the external environment in an easy and professional manner.
This paper aims to provide an interesting application that
guarantees ultimate communication with the disabled users and
vice
versa. The key feature of this application is employing the
Arabic language as a medium of communication to learn all the
sign
language terms.
The power of this application appears in two aspects: first of
all, the ability of normal people to communicate with the
targeted
people without having any previous knowledge on signs
language. This can be either achieved by voice recognition of
words
or by typing the words in the Arabic language. The application
is then displays the appropriate image(s) in the sign language.
Secondly, and more importantly, people with special needs
communicate with normal people by choosing the signs images
on
their phones from the numerous categories stored in the
databases which express their ideas and thoughts. Consequently,
the
set of images is transformed into a text paragraph. We evaluated
our application by testing it on real deaf and dumb users. We
carefully created scenarios on realistic situations. The early
results are promising as all deaf found the proposed technology
useful and 90% of them wanted to use it on daily basis.
© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Chairs.
Keywords: Disabled people; deaf; assistive technology; sign
language; mobile application.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +0096-795673231; fax:
+00962(05) 3826625.
E-mail address: [email protected]
© 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access
article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Chairs
296 Emad E. Abdallah and Ebaa Fayyoumi / Procedia
Computer Science 94 ( 2016 ) 295 – 301
1. Introduction
Deafness and hearing loss is the condition of incapability to
hear things, either totally or partially. According to the
World Health Organization, 360 million people worldwide
(Over 5% of the world’s population) have disabling
hearing loss where 32 million are children (“World Health
Organization,” 2015). It is the second largest proportion
in the distribution of people with disabilities according to the
General Census of Population and Housing.
Deafness has a deep impact on the quality of life for the deaf
individuals and their community. Some people think
that intelligence of deaf and dumb people are less than normal
people, but what we would like to express that this
idea is not true! Deaf and dumb people have sharp intelligence
that makes them equal with normal people.
Hearing disabilities differ from other disabilities, due to the
presence of another language that compensates for

verbal or oral language and it is known as a sign language. We
can define the sign language that it is the language
which used by deaf and dumb people to communicate with each
other and with other people. Despite the existence
of another language that compensates the verbal language. The
communication between the disabled people and
the normal people is still difficult even with the existence of the
sign language. This is because of the
misconception which is common among people. As human we
would like to contribute by developing an android
application to connect people with special needs and other
people.
Assistive technologies cover a wide range of assistive, adaptive,
and rehabilitative devices for people with special
needs. In the past 20 years, there has been a huge development
in the sector of deafness and hearing loss assistive
technologies. Assistive technologies are classified into
hardware based, software based, and prosthetic implants 1.
For many years, people with hearing loss have used text
telephone or telecommunications devices to communicate
by phone. Assistive technologies allows people who are deaf,
hard of hearing, or speech impaired to communicate
through a communications assistant (CA) with people who use a
standard telephone. A CA relays the TTY (text
telephone or telecommunications device for deaf and hard of
hearing people) 2,3 input to the telephone user and
types that person’s response back to the TTY user.
A game for deaf children is proposed in 4 to develop the
children language skills. The game uses camera and
sensors to detect and collect signal data for the American Sign
Language (ASL) recognition system. The user will
wear gloves and any sign made will be captured by the camera.
The system then shows a video with a signer
demonstrating the correct ASL phrase. The user can then mimic

these gestures. The possibility for deaf
educational technology is increased by allowing signing
children to interact with the computer using their gesture-
based language.
A computerized scheme to assist the deaf people is THETOS, it
translate a spoken language to Polish sign
language. The system uses natural language processing
techniques5. They used a scripting notation for signing
signals and a web browser plug-in to interpret this notation into
gesture data. They achieve a very good delivery of
signing. Moreover, they escape the inflexibility of video or
motion capture. Tests with deaf community have
shown that the method can deliver suitable quality of signing.
Interactive computer identification and correction of language
errors is proposed in6. The main objective is to
employ natural language processing to train deaf people on
written English. A deaf person send his writing and the
system will then execute a syntactic analysis, defines the errors
and deliver feedback. The feedback will help the
deaf to be aware of the nature of the errors he/she commit. The
writing could be resubmitted for a second check
and the cycle is repeated.
Application for deaf people is presented in7, the idea is to help
dumb or deaf people to express their feelings to
normal people with the help of sign language. The application
provides deaf people with an approach to become
more close to advanced technology by using speech to image

conversion. An avatar based translation system from
Arabic speech to Arabic sign language for deaf people is
presented in8 which define the significance of web to
search multimedia content such as image or video. The
technique is composed of a database of the captured 3D
motions of Arabic sign language. The sign language motion will
be recorded using data gloves. A graphical
conversion of the digitized sign language will be re-animated
using standard. In addition, speech is captured by
microphone, the recognized words is saved to be translated to
signs. They can also serve as the input to further
linguistic processing in order to achieve speech understanding.
Most of the current available mobile applications (iOS and
Android) seek to serve the deaf and dumb people in a
very limited way. For instance, there are some applications that
teach the English letter only and some of the
others show the sign and what it means. Motivated by the wide
uses of smartphones in our daily activities and the
provided accessibility features have paved the way to use
mobile applications effectively in making the deaf
people more independent in their community. The application
guarantees ultimate communication with the
disabled users and vice versa. The key feature of this
application is employing the Arabic language as a medium of
communication to learn the sign language terms and to
communicate with deaf and dumb people in a simple and
creative way.
2. Design and Development
The new system is consisting of several parts for learning,
playing and converting the Arabic text to sign language
and vice versa. The first part is used to teach deaf and normal
people the sign language. Learning option is
attractive and organized into several groups. Each group

contains items that are related to each other (e.g. animals,
friends and family…etc). After choosing the group a list view
will appear for several images and sign
representation. Moreover, a clear explanation is shown for how
to make the sign in motions. Fig.1. show the
sequence diagrams for learning and converting signs to text
choices. Fig.2. display some screenshots of the
learning and converting options. Clearly the system will refer to
two sets of databases. The first database is signs
database that contain all the images of the signs. The second
database contains the equivalent meaning for every
single sign.
Fig.1. Sequence diagrams for learning and converting signs to
text
The new application provide an interactive Android game,
which is based on finding the similarities between four
pictures represent four different things in Arabic sign language.
For example: pain, fatigue, hospital and doctor
(indicate the word patient). Fig.3. shows screenshots of the
learning game. The proposed deaf game provides a
new method to increase the knowledge of the sign language in a
fun and attractive way. This game might motivate

parents, friends, teachers and any normal people to learn the
sign language in order to communicate with deaf
person in the family, community or even in the class room.
(a) (b) (c) (d)
Fig.2. displays screenshots of the learning option and
converting text option. (a) Choose the group (b) Learn a
static sign language for every element of the group (c) Learn
detailed sequence of how to move the hands and the
facial expression to show signal (d) Deaf person choose the sign
images and the application will convert it to
readable phrase.
Fig.3. Screenshots of the learning game.
In developing this application, the Android SDK and native
development kit (NDK) were used. Android
applications are primarily divided into two sections; Java source
code and XML layout. The source code is
structured via the Java package hierarchy and the XML layout.
The XML value files that make up the bulk of the
non-code assets the application flow chart is simple and does
not have many decision nodes, which makes the
application fast and responsive.

3. Results and Discussion
The proposed technology was tested using three different ways.
First test was performed inside SDK to check the
functionality. The second test was achieved by launching the
application on different phone devices. The third test
was executed by asking 10 deaf persons and 15 normal
volunteers to use the application. In the first verification
test, the application was simulated to test the functionality of
the application. All tests were performed for code
verification and library checking on the application without any
errors or bugs. No false positives or negatives
were recorded. The second test was performed to ensure that the
application is working correctly on different
screen sizes and resolutions, it was tested on various devices
from different manufacturers such as: Sony Xperia
Z2, Samsung Galaxy S4, Samsung Galaxy S6, and LG G2. In
this test, the application worked properly on the
different devices.
For the third verification test, we used usability testing that
gives direct input on how real users use the system, we
evaluated our application by testing it on real deaf users. 10
deaf or dumb people and 15 normal volunteers use the
application for more than a month. We carefully created
scenarios, or realistic situations for testing purposes. The
subjects then tested if their signs are understood effectively and
efficiently. The questionnaire contains five simple
questions with a scale of five answers (1 = Poor, 2 = Fair, 3 =
Good, 4 = Very Good, 5 = Excellent). The questions
are designed to investigate if the application: is easy to use, has
clear instructions, is helpful, and has short
response time. The last question intended to find if the subjects
are willing to use it on daily basis. Fig.4. depicts

the histograms of the collected data.
The results show that about 95% of the deaf and dumb were
satisfied about the easiness of using the system.
Interestingly, all the deaf people who use the application found
the application useful and gave it 3 to 5 points and
all of them were excited about using it on daily basis.
Moreover, the doctors specialized in teaching sign language
have agreed that the idea of creating such application is
beneficial for deaf, dumb and normal people at all levels.
4. Conclusion
In this paper, we presented a mobile application to help deaf
and dumb people in their daily activities. The key
feature of this application is engaging the Arabic language as a
medium of communication to learn all the sign
language terms. The proposed assistive application allow
normal people to communicate with the targeted people
without having any previous knowledge on signs language. The
new application was tested on real deaf, dumb,
and normal people. All the deaf and dumb found the application
valuable and most of them wanted to use on
regular basis.
Acknowledgements
First of all, we would like to thank the Hashemite University for
the continuous help and endless support. We
extremely grateful to Sundos AL-Tamimi, Areen Ateia, Sundos
Ibrahem and Alaa Saied for implementing the
Android platform. Thanks a lot!

(a) (b)
(c) (d)
(e) (f)

Fig.4. The histograms of the collected data. (a) Easy to use, (b)
Clear instruction, (c) Helpful application collected
from of the deaf and dumb people. (d) Easy to use, (e) Clear
instruction, (f) Helpful application collected from
normal people.
References
1. Cheadle B. Future Reflections. The National Federation of
the Blind Magazine for Parents and Teachers of Blind Children,
1985 4(3).
2. fcc.gov. 711 for Telecommunications Relay Service. Federal
Communications Commission. Archived from the original,
Retrieved 22
February 2015.
Easy to Use
Easy to Use Helpful Application
Helpful Application
Clear Instructions
Clear Instructions
3. Brian S. Microsoft and NBC Complete Web Divorce. The
New York Times. Retrieved 9 October 2012.
4. Brashear H .Improving the efficacy of automated sign

language practice tools. ACM SIGACCESS Accessibility and
Computing - ASSETS
no. 89, 2007, ACM New York, NY, USA.
5. Kennaway J. R., Glauert J. R. W. and Zwitserlood I
.Providing signed content on the Internet by synthesized
animation. ACM
Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 14(3),
2007, ACM New York, NY, USA.
6. Michaud L. N. and McCoy K. F .Modeling user language
proficiency in a writing tutor for deaf learners of English. '99
Proceedings of a
Symposium on Computer Mediated Language Assessment and
Evaluation in Natural Language Processing, Association for
Computational Linguistics Stroudsburg, PA, USA, 1999.
7. Patil D., Jadhav A., Chavan A., and Nikam S. Android
Application for Deaf People. Imperial Journal of
Interdisciplinary Research (IJIR)
2(3), 2016.
8. Halawani S.M. and Zaitun A.B. An Avatar Based Translation
System from Arabic Speech to Arabic Sign Language for Deaf
People.
International Journal of Information Science and Education.
ISSN 2231-1262, 2(1) (2012) pp. 13-20.
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Deaf to the Needs of Hearing-Impaired Scientists
By Nadya Anscombe Mar. 30, 2007 , 8:00 AM
International Symbol for Deafness (courtesy: International
Commission on Technology and Accessibility)
Natasha Hirst is one of life's achievers. She has a �rst-class
master's degree in chemistry,
served as president of the National Union of Students in Wales,
was named most enterprising
student in a national competition, and is currently writing her
Ph.D.
But despite her love for the �eld, Hirst will never work as a
scientist. She is profoundly deaf,
and the barriers she has faced have left her with a very dim
view of academic science in the
United Kingdom. As a result of what she calls "hideously poor
access for me as a deaf person
and a resounding lack of will for anything to be done about it,"
she left science last year for a
career in politics.
A bottleneck for deaf scientists
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The United Kingdom's Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) of

1995 makes it illegal for
employers and education providers to discriminate against
disabled employees and students.
But the act came into force only in 2002, and many universities
and employers are only now
learning what it means for them. They are just �guring out, for
example, that education
providers must make reasonable adjustments to prevent disabled
students from being placed
at a "substantial" disadvantage. These obligations are
anticipatory: The act charges educators
with thinking ahead to make the accommodations disabled
students are likely to need.
The challenges are considerable for deaf students seeking
science training. Hirst can lip-read,
but she can't lip-read and write notes at the same time; it just
isn't possible. So she needed a
note taker during lectures, and fellow students just wouldn't do.
"I needed to know what was
said and not someone's interpretation of what was said," Hirst
observes. "The brief notes that
fellow students took were not enough for me to get the full
lecture content." Under U.K. law,
Hirst quali�ed for government subsidies to pay for services
such as note takers, translators,
and special equipment, but along with her disability adviser, she
struggled to �nd someone
who was up to the job. Her solution? Do the best she could on
her own, then talk to the
lecturers afterward.
Lab practicals were even worse. "I had no support in tutorials or
lab practicals. I never heard
any instructions and without fail went wrong every single time,"
Hirst says.

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Natasha Hirst
The health-and-safety excuse
It's true, Hirst says, that teachers and trainers don't set out to
discriminate against deaf
people. But, she says, the problem goes beyond a failure to meet
special needs. Hirst says
that in her training she was viewed as a potential hazard--to
herself and to others--and not as a
promising young scientist. "It was voiced to me that if I had not
been so good at chemistry, I
would not have been allowed into practical sessions for health
and safety reasons," she says.
"But if you don't do the practicals, you cannot get an accredited
degree."
Hirst is not alone in believing that health and safety regulations
are used to discriminate
against deaf scientists. Iain Poplett, a research fellow at King's
College London working on
nuclear quadrupole resonance spectroscopy, says he has missed
out on jobs because
employers used health and safety regulations as an excuse for
not employing deaf people. "I
believe that a deaf scientist is more likely to be employed in the
laboratory in the 1960s than
today because many employers think that health and safety laws
supersede the Disability
Discrimination Act, and this is simply not true," he says. "If I
were a careers adviser to a deaf

person thinking of working in science, I would explain that they
would have a better chance if
they aimed for a desk job such as theoretical physics,
mathematics, or computer science,"
Poplett says.
"The bottom line," says Sarah Page of the external diversity
team at the Health and Safety
Executive (HSE), "is that those in charge of science and
educational institutions have to
assess risk, taking the at-risk population's personal
circumstances into account. For people
who have total hearing loss, there are many other ways of
alerting them to danger, such as
visual warnings, vibrating alerts, or supervision/buddying."
Page concludes, "I can see no
reason to justify the exclusion of deaf people from scienti�c
laboratories."
Government o�cials are addressing the problem, but progress is
slow. "HSE and the DRC
[Disability Rights Commission] are working together to produce
guidance on health and safety
risk assessment and disability, due out later this year," Page
says. Some guidance is already
available on the DRC's Web site.
Uneven assistance in the U.K.
In the United Kingdom, disabled students can get �nancial
support to help them overcome the
limitations their disabilities impose--although not every student
can get as much as they need.
U.K. undergraduates can get a disabled-students allowance
(DSA) of up to £18,500 from their
local education authority. The DSA covers the costs of

interpreters, note takers, and
equipment--such as, in Hirst's case, a laptop computer and a
radio aid. Postgraduates on
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research-council-funded projects can get similar support. But
postgraduates such as Hirst,
whose training is not supported by the research council, qualify
for just £5000--which she says
isn't enough. This lack of �nancial support as a postgrad, Hirst
says, was the �nal blow that
caused her to leave science.
So Hirst says she had to �ght to get help. When she needed to
attend a training course, neither
her department nor the trainer agreed to pay the costs of an
interpreter or equipment. She had
to threaten to sue her department, she says, before it decided to
contribute to the cost.
She has the same problem at conferences. "Whoever sends me
won't pay for access needs,
and whoever organises the event won't ensure that it is
accessible," she says. "I am not a
person who gives up easily, but this problem got too big to
�ght."
But even those who have money can have trouble �nding the
help they need. For people
whose �rst language is sign language, �nding an interpreter
can be di�cult. Audrey Cameron,

now a science teacher in a mainstream school, received part-
time communication support
from her research council during her Ph.D. "But the interpreters
at the time used signed-
support English, which is different to British Sign Language
[BSL]," she says. "In the end, my
mother came to the lectures and took notes for me." A couple of
years later, the Royal National
Institute for the Deaf set up a new interpreter agency, and the
situation improved--but this
didn't solve the problem completely. "I used interpreters for
meetings, conferences, and
courses, but none of them could keep up with the science jargon
at Ph.D. level, so I often had
to resort to pen and paper," she says. Some efforts have been
made to address the problem.
Some Web sites, for example, allow students and interpreters to
look up science, engineering,
and biotechnology terms and translate them into BSL.
Giving presentations--another key aspect of science and science
training--can also be a major
challenge. Cameron's solution? "I would ask a colleague to read
my script and record her voice
as a soundtrack to the presentation with subtitles on screen,"
she says. Answering questions
after the presentation is a harder problem, however, in a dark
and crowded room where lips
can be di�cult to see. For this, there's no substitute for a sign-
language interpreter.
Back in the classroom, many deaf people do not use sign
language and choose to lip-read
instead. In these cases, simple measures can ensure that a deaf
student is fully included in
the lecture or practical. Providing written instructions or notes,

letting the student sit at the
front of the class, improving lighting, and using hearing-aid
systems, if required, can make the
difference between success and failure. "Oh, and beards should
be banned," Hirst says.
Grant Jacobs, a New Zealander who did his Ph.D. at MRC
Laboratory of Molecular Biology in
Cambridge, U.K., agrees that such details can make a big
difference. Jacobs says he had a
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happy time at Cambridge, but he recalls an incident during his
undergraduate degree that, he
says, still makes him angry. "A date for one exam was shifted
forward in time, with the
announcement only given verbally. I had no idea the date had
been moved and was gutted
about missing the exam."
Tilak Ratnanather
Expatriate success stories
Until the DDA became law in the U.K. in 2002, the provision of
assistance was dependent on
the kindness of individual tutors. Tilak Ratnanather, now an
assistant research professor in the
department of biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore, Maryland,
had a very helpful admissions tutor at his university in the

United Kingdom. His tutor's
assistance was "impossible to quantify in terms of the bene�ts I
reaped in the �rst year of my
undergraduate degree," he says. The tutor "arranged for a set of
lecture notes to be sent to me
before each semester started. He also informed all [his other]
lecturers that they would need
to use the radio hearing-aid system."
Today, Ratnanather supervises and manages 10 projects
covering topics including
schizophrenia, autism, and auditory disorders. He left the
United Kingdom, he says, not
because of discrimination but for better opportunities in the
United States. "I might have
ended up as a lecturer in the U.K., but I would not be doing the
kind of cutting-edge work that I
do now," he says. "In the U.S., I have the freedom to pursue the
things that interest me without
the encumbrances of �scal problems in U.K. science--though
these do exist in the U.S. now."
Peter Steyger, now an associate professor of otolaryngology-
head and neck surgery at Oregon
Health and Science University in Portland, left his home
country for the United States because
"in the U.S., there is a�rmative action to support the progress
of deaf scientists." The mentor's
directory at the U.S. National Institute on Deafness and Other
Communication Disorders, he
notes, lists researchers committed to mentoring deaf students,
postdoctoral fellows, and
junior scientists. Also, "NIH [National Institutes of Health]

offers disability supplements to NIH-
funded grants, which funds the salary and bene�ts of a disabled
student," Steyger says. "This
program really got me integrated with the U.S. system."
Are things improving in the U.K. ?
"Disabled people are under-represented in higher education in
the U.K.," says Steve Haines,
policy manager for education at the DRC, "but there have been
improvements made since the
Disability Discrimination Act came into force for post-16
education. An increasing number of
disabled people are going to university, and this is as a direct
result of the DDA."
Haines believes that many of the problems that disabled people
encounter are due to the lack
of awareness of university staff. "We do know that people are
often more aware and
concerned about health and safety regulations than they are
about the needs and capabilities
of disabled students. But after some disability-awareness
training, these problems can often
be sorted out before any litigation. Making adjustments for deaf
students in science
laboratories should be a straightforward task."
As signs of progress, Haines cites the work of organisations
such as SKILL--the National
Bureau for Students with Disabilities--and the National
Association of Disability Practitioners.
But, he says, deaf students in particular face practical issues.
"Not only is there a shortage of
BSL interpreters, they are also an expensive resource."

Barbara Waters, executive director of SKILL, agrees that more
attention needs to be paid to
practical issues. "We would like to see a review of the DSA for
deaf students and give them a
top-up to pay for interpreters for those courses that require
more contact hours than usual,"
she says. Like Haines, she believes conditions for disabled
undergraduates and postgraduates
have improved since the introduction of the DDA and that the
uptake of university places by
disabled students is increasing.
That's a very important thing, Waters notes, because a
university education is especially
important for disabled people. "The unemployment level among
disabled people in the
http://www.nidcd.nih.gov.york.ezproxy.cuny.edu/mentor/index.
asp
http://www.skill.org.uk/
http://www.nadp-uk.org/
working population is 50%," she says. But "once a disabled
person graduates, their chance of
employment is around the same as everyone else."
Resources for Deaf Scientists
Advice on how to make a course accessible to disabled students
is available at Premia. A
related article can be found on Science Careers.
A guidance for post-16 education providers on implementation
of the Disability Discrimination
Act and how to perform inclusive risk assessments can be found

at the Learning and Skills
Development Agency.
Nadya Anscombe is a freelance science writer
in the United Kingdom.
Comments, suggestions? Please send your
feedback to our editor.
DOI: 10.1126/science.caredit.a0700044
Posted in: Job Market, Job Market, Job Market, Europe, Europe,
Europe
doi: 10.1126/science.caredit.a0700044
Nadya Anscombe
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