Intelligent mobile assistant for hearing impairers to interact with the society in Sinhala language

Abstract

A language is a way of words or signs that people use to share feelings and ideas with each other. In view of the society there is an issue in communication among hearing impaired people and hearing people. Most of the hearing people have no idea about the sign languages and they are not having any desire to learn sign language. Thus, typically hearing impairers are used to be isolated. When considering about all the solutions there is an absence of a Sinhala application with Sinhala sign language. Sinhala is the native language of the Sinhalese people. Sinhala is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, who make up the largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka, numbering about 20 million. Sinhalese is also spoken as a second language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, totaling about four million. Since most of the solutions are desktop applications, hearing impairers feel so uncomfortable. In the modern era where mobile technology plays a superior role in day to day life, Project “Sanwadha” is an intelligent assistant for the hearing-impaired people for communication. The proposed application is under cross platform mobile development where users can reach the solution widely. The core of the Project “Sanwadha” is Instant Messaging (IM) chat. Here the application will get the text from the ordinary person in Sinhala language and it converts to Sinhala sign language. The message will be directing to hearing impaired person in a format of GIF. 2D model can be used by the User (Hearing impaired) to grasp the idea by creating the sign as they wish. That sign would be altering in to either Text or Voice to interact with the society. Hearing people also can cooperate with the hearing impairers with the voice recognition mechanism. This solution would come up with an intelligent application where hearing impairers makes empower in the society through communication. Reaching Sri Lankan deaf community is another foremost objective of this project. This hopes to narrow digital divide that between enabled and hearing- impaired users. The significance of this proposed application is that it allows hearing-impaired individuals to communicate when they are long distance apart. This application would bridge the gap between hearing impairers with the society.