EASIER – Intelligent Automatic Sign Language Translation

Intelligent Automatic Sign Language Translation

Creating a framework for barrier-free communication among deaf and hearing individuals.

An approach that places deaf individuals at the center of communication.

EASIER proposes an innovative, intelligent translation framework that places deaf individuals at the center of interaction, whether it takes place at school, workplace, or home. This will be achieved by exploiting advanced technologies for sign language recognition, animation, and machine translation, along with expert knowledge, high-end communication technologies, beyond-state-of-the-art data processing, and machine learning pipelines.

EASIER avatar, Paula, signing the name of the project in Greek Sign Language.

ABOUT EASIER

EASIER is a Horizon 2020 project that aims to design, develop, and validate a complete multilingual machine translation system that will act as a framework for barrier-free communication among deaf and hearing individuals.

BACKGROUND

For centuries, the education of deaf children has been focused on teaching them to speak. Thankfully speech-exclusive approach is becoming a thing of the past with sign language education becoming more and more common.

OBJECTIVES

EASIER’s goal is to create a framework for barrier-free communication among deaf and hearing citizens across the European Union by enabling users of sign languages to use their preferred language to interact with hearing individuals and vice-versa.

VISION

EASIER proposes a systematic approach to existing technical challenges. The project intents to address them by providing a bidirectional translation system for a larger variety of specific contexts, facilitating the interactions between deaf and hearing persons.

ABOUT EASIER

BACKGROUND

OBJECTIVES

VISION

The consortium

EASIER formed a consortium of 14 partners from eight European countries. The team includes representatives from the industry, higher education and research institutions, non-governmental organizations, research organizations, and SMEs.