German organization working on sign language tool for voice assistants

The German youth association of the hearing impaired is working on Signs. That is a tool that makes it possible to communicate with sign language with voice assistants such as Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Cortana. It is software that works in a browser.

According to the initiators, Signs uses machine learning to recognize hand gestures. Those gestures are converted into data that the speech assistants can handle. The answer provided by the assistant is then sent back to Signs and displayed visually.

The tool should enable the hard of hearing and deaf to use voice assistants, even if they cannot speak or hear the answers. Signs consists only of software, which should work on all devices with a browser and an integrated camera.

The project is currently in an early prototype phase and is currently working with German Sign Language. It is not yet clear when Signs will become available in practice and support for other sign languages ​​will follow.