National Science Foundation-Funded Projects
Relating to Persons With Disabilities
The National Science Foundation funds a number of programs and projects
relating to persons with disabilities. The following are examples of some
projects. To conduct a key word search of the NSF grants award database,
see: http://www.nsf.gov/verity/srchawd.htm The following grants may be
searched by entering the grant number listed.
9726645
Ronald Cole
Oregon Graduate Institute
Small Grant for Exploratory Research: Bringing Spoken Language Systems
to the Classroom for Learning Training with Hearing-Impaired People
Cole and his colleagues will evaluate the potential of their electronic-based
spoken language systems to improve learning, language skills and creative
expression in profoundly deaf children. Students attending the Tucker-Maxon
Oral School will use the integrated speech recognition, text-to-speech
synthesis and an artificial talking head developed at the Oregon Graduate
Institute's Center for Spoken Language Understanding.
9701803
Dimitri Metaxes
University of Pennsylvania
Towards American Sign Language Recognition from Visual Input
The objective of this research is the development of methods for the
automatic recognition of American Sign Language (ASL) utterances using
as input the 3D shape and motion parameters of a subject's face, hands
and arms. These parameters are extracted based on the use of computer
vision techniques on relevant image sequences. The final goal of this
research is to demonstrate the feasibility of building an automated robust
system with high recognition accuracy (recovery of sign sequences at the
sign level) that is capable of handling the inflectional and derivational
properties of ASL.
9612682
Ivan Sag & Herbert Clark
Stanford University
Language Generation for a Speech Prosthesis
This project is developing a novel approach to natural language generation,
applying it to computer-aided text and speech generation for people with
physical disabilities. Many people who cannot speak because of physical
disability use text-to-speech generators as prosthetic devices. However,
users of speech prostheses often have more general loss of motor control,
and despite aids such as word prediction, text entry is slow and difficult.
The main focus of this research is investigating techniques to improve
rates sufficiently for more natural conversation to be possible, without
sacrificing flexibility of content.
9528985
Carol J. Neidle
Boston University
SignStream: A Multimedia Tool for Language Research
The project's objectives are: 1) development of "SignStream," a database
tool for analysis of linguistic data captured on video; 2) use of SignStream
for creation of a large database of utterances from American Sign Language,
consisting of raw video and fine-grained linguistic transcription; 3)
development of an interactive format for linking electronic documents
to SignStream databases (allowing direct access from texts to video, encoded
data and SignStream tools transcription).
9416916
Kathleen F. McCoy
University of Delaware
An Exploratory System to Teach English as a Second Language to Deaf
Students with ASL Competency
The long-term goal of this work is to develop a writing tool for native
users of American Sign Language (ASL). Envisioned is a computer system
that will take a piece of text written by a deaf user, analyze that text
for errors, engage that user in a tutorial dialogue, and generate appropriate
corrections to the text.
See also Press Release.
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