ASL to voice gloves

If someone can take it to the next level and figure out a way to translate signs to text then I think it could be useful in some situations. Much like some people prefer to dictate rather than type, perhaps others would prefer to "dictate" by signing rather than typing.

If the intention is to help aid communication between hearing and deaf people with the glove only being able to translate finger spelling to text -- than I don't think it will be helpful. Fingerspelling out every word would be tedious. If you are going to do that, one might as well type -- that would probably be faster.

The inventor, Patterson, doesn't have a hearing loss and that probably explains this comment:

"Yeah, in a way it would be a one-way communication," Patterson said. "But if they can't hear, they're usually good at reading lips," he said of the hearing-impaired.
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Uh no. Lipreading isn't that easy. Only about 30% of the English language is visible. And using the term hearing-impaired? Makes me wonder how many D/d/HH people he spoke with before working on his project.

I also noticed that the article is dated January 28, 2002. Looks like Patterson had trouble getting funding for his invention at it's latest state of technology.
 
Jazzberry said:
I also noticed that the article is dated January 28, 2002. Looks like Patterson had trouble getting funding for his invention at it's latest state of technology.
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Good catch! I didn't notice that.

My first impression was it looked pretty expensive just for fingerspelling "training wheels".
 
mbrek said:
Good catch! I didn't notice that.

My first impression was it looked pretty expensive just for fingerspelling "training wheels".
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Heh. You know I didn't think about that. If the inventor was willing to sell the glove for $20.00 bucks or less that actually might be a good idea. I have met some really, really sloppy finger spellers. Maybe the glove could have a built in electronic zap to take the place of a teacher's ruler! :)

Seriously -- I agree with you. But if the intention was to take a starting step for a system that could translate sign to text -- I think that would be really cool.
 
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