Video transcript · 5 min · 601 words

Lightning talk on learning sign language with Lingua Libre SignIt: transcript

Hugo Lopez argues that everyone, not only deaf people, would gain from basic sign language skills. He presents a Wikimedia France project: a Firefox extension that shows sign videos for words on web pages, fed by a video recording studio built into Lingua Libre.

Key points

Sign language helps hearing people too, for example babies who sign before they can speak, elderly people who lose hearing, and noisy settings.
Wikimedia France proposes a Firefox extension plus a recording chain based on Lingua Libre, designed for babies, adults and the elderly.
On Wikipedia, clicking a word opens a window with the sign video, such as the sign for crab.
The video recording studio inside Lingua Libre lets a contributor record about 300 videos per hour.
The current focus is a basic vocabulary list to help librarians welcome non-verbal people who only sign.
Listeners are asked to learn some signs, use open-licensed resources, and contact the team; the project is also supported by the University of Toulouse and the local signing community.

Chapters

0:00Goal: mutual understanding with signing people
0:36Why everyone could benefit from sign language
1:48Wikimedia France's Firefox extension and recording chain
2:44How the extension and video studio work
3:18Current projects and how to help

Full transcript

0:00And without further ado, next speaker, Hugo. Hello, everyone. So today I will speak about the language of the world and how to increase mutual understanding. What I mean by mutual understanding is the general public being able to communicate with people who are signing. So, I will first argue that we all need, we all could gain from learning sign language. And I will also announce a new project from Wikimedia France, which is going in this direction.

0:36So, my first case for what sign language can be useful. These are my nephew. They learn sign language at an early age. And they were able to communicate with their parents before being verbal, which is very helpful for the parents. Another case is with elder people. Elder people tend to lose their hearing capabilities. So that would be interesting to be able to communicate with them with signs. As for myself, I am deaf from the left ear.

1:09So that would also be a safe tenet for myself to learn sign language. But I will also gain from it if I was able to communicate with people in signing, in my professional life, or with friends in noisy environment, and so on. So, the main point is where our sign language are perceived as primarily for these people, all of us at different stage of our life would gain from basic mastery of sign language. From this statement, we can look for solution to help move toward basic ability of sign language.

1:48And in Wikimedia France, our solution is our proposition is Firefox extension plus a recording chain which is based on Lingua Libre, which you may already know. So our core is a core mission statement of this project is to allow to allow everyone to learn sign language with in mind a transgenerational design with baby in mind, adults in mind, and elder generation. The learning change looks like this. So we have on one side, on the right side, the video studio, video recording studio, which create data which can feed then our Firefox extension.

2:44So, the extension looks like this. You can go on Wikipedia, click on some words, and when you click on the word, you can have a modal window, which is opening and showing you the sign language. Here, I click on the crab sign character, and that shows you the video of the crab. The video recording studio looks like this. It's integrated to LinguaLibre, and it allows the contributor to provide about 300 video per hour.

3:18As of now, we have few projects going, but that's many prototypes, and the project we are pushing right now, it's kind of basic vocabulary list for librarians to welcome the public which are non-verbal and can only sign. On how you could help with this project, if we want to encourage sign language, just start to be curious and enthusiast about sign language.

3:49That's easier than it looks. You can search for sign online. There is a very good project, but it is copyrighted. So we want to do something open source, open license. You can learn some sign. You can also start to say hello and make some sign with your family. And you can contact us if you want to become active in trading resources, educational resources. For the team making this, you have the team right here. I'm the third developer, actually. And the project is supported by Wikimedia France, but also by the University of Toulouse and local singing community. Thank you, Hugo. Sign language is such an important topic.

Source and licence

Recording: File:Wikimania 2023 - Plenary - 18 August - Lightning Talk - Sign Languages of the world increase mutual understanding with Lingualibre SignIt.webm by Wikimania 2023 (2023-08-18), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. The transcript, summary and chapters on this page are shared under the same licence (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The transcript is machine speech-to-text by the TidyTools Audio & video transcriber; the summary, key points and chapters were written by Claude from that transcript. Both may contain errors: check the recording before quoting it.