Artificial intelligence to teach reading to deaf children

Artificial intelligence to teach reading to deaf children

Huawei launches Storysign, an application that translates the words of a story into sign language

  The magic of stories has a great impact on the brains of children . It is a common ritual that every night parents sit with their children to read some texts at bedtime, a tradition that children with deafness can not generally share. At least until a while ago, because Artificial Intelligence - so fashionable nowadays - and technology, can change many difficulties positively .

And is that deafness affects more than 5% of the world's population , that is, 360 million people worldwide. Of these, 32 million are children, according to WHO data. In Spain between one and five newborns, of every thousand, are born with some type of deafness, according to figures from the National Institute of Statistics. Statistics indicate that these children generally fall behind in the process of learning to read with respect to their fellow listeners.

   To help in this , StorySign was born , an application that Huawei has launched and that translates the words of a selection of children's books into sign language. Developed using artificial intelligence, the app helps open the world of books to deaf children and their families. Users should only place the camera of their phone over the words of the story and the avatar, baptized Star, will translate the printed words into sign language.

Its operation is very simple: just open the app, choose a title from the StorySign library and hold the phone on the pages of the physical copy

The application is compatible with ten current sign languages and can be run on any Android device with version 6.0 or higher.

The image recognition allows the smartphone to recognize the words on each page , while the optical character recognition (OCR) ensures that the application works with greater precision. The performance of artificial intelligence also allows increasing the speed at which the pages of the book are loaded into the application, preventing children from having to wait to discover what happens next in each chapter of the story.

90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents and 51% of parents of deaf children in Spain have little knowledge about sign language or are completely unaware

"We are confident that this tool will have a significant impact on the deaf community, helping more deaf children learn to read at the same level as children without hearing problems. We also hope that the launch of StorySign will generate more conversation about the importance of the equality of deaf people throughout Europe in all aspects of their lives, "said Mark Wheatley , executive director of the European Union for the Deaf.