Technology for supporting web information search and learning in Sign Language

Sign Languages (SL) are underrepresented in the digital world, which contributes to the digital divide for the Deaf Community. In this paper, our goal is twofold: (1) to review the implications of current SL generation technologies for two key user web tasks, information search and learning and (2) to propose a taxonomy of the technical and functional dimensions for categorizing those technologies. The review reveals that although contents can currently be portrayed in SL by means of videos of human signers or avatars, the debate about how bilingual (text and SL) versus SL-only websites affect signers’ comprehension of hypertext content emerges as an unresolved issue in need of further empirical research. The taxonomy highlights that videos of human signers are ecological but require a high-cost group of experts to perform text to SL translations, video editing and web uploading. Avatar technology, generally associated with automatic text-SL translators, reduces bandwidth requirements and human resources but it lacks reliability. The insights gained through this review may enable designers, educators or users to select the technology that best suits their goals.