Visual signing for audiovisual media makes such content accessible to individuals whose mother tongue is a sign language and not a written language. In many European countries, constitutional and legal provisions assure the availability of sign language on TV.
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), depending on the technological capabitities and on the available equipment?
3- An HbbTV-based avatar signing service in Spanish allowing users to access Text-to-Signing for content with a well-defined semantic framework such as weather forecasts. This service will be tested by means of user groups.
4- Additional non technological user experience testing of various end user-related aspects of sign language interpretation, which will involve users from the target groups, may be considered. These tests will provide inputs to work on metrics for the Quality of Service.