Pilot D is the last one of 4 pilots and related to sign language translation:
- Visual signing for audiovisual media makes such content accessible to individuals whose mother tongue is a sign language and not an oral language.
- Users of sign language are often born deaf. In many European countries, constitutional and legal provisions assure the provision of sign language (estimated less than 1% of the population).
- Offering closed signing (where the viewer can choose to see or not to see the interpreter) requires much more bandwidth than closed subtitles or audiodescription. Signing is important not only for mainstream programming and TV programming specifically for the signing communities in Europe and elsewhere but also emergency alerts on TV.
©RTP: Left Signing on RTP1 (Portugal) - Right Signing on RTBF (Belgium)
Pilot D objectives:
The four core objectives of this sub-pilot respond to the above challenges:
1- A prototype version of a complete sign language interpretation production workflow chain for broadcasters which enables basic (HbbTV1.1/1.5) and advanced (HbbTV2.0) customised HbbTV sign language services.
2- Hbb/IP TV-based sign language services allowing users to customise the size and positioning of sign language interpretation in an overlaid window for large-scale provision and testing in Portugal, Germany (Berlin-Brandenburg), provided by RBB, IRT, RTP, UPM, and UAB.
3- An HbbTV-based avatar signing service in Spanish provided by Vicomtech allowing users to access Text-to-Signing for content with a well-defined semantic framework such as weather forecasts.
4- Additional user experience testing of various end user-related aspects of sign language interpretation in the hybrid world involving users from the target groups which will inputs to work on metrics for the Quality of Service done by UAB.