Book chapter
OA Policy
English

Healthcare Accessibility for the Deaf

Published inMeng Ji, Pierrette Bouillon and Mark Seligman (Ed.), Translation Technology in Accessible Health Communication, p. 152-174
PublisherCambridge : Cambridge University Press
Collection
  • Studies in Natural Language Processing
Publication date2023-09-21
Abstract

Access to healthcare profoundly impacts the health and quality of life of Deaf people. Automatic translation tools are crucial in improving communication between Deaf patients and their healthcare providers. The aim of this chapter is to present the pipeline used to create the Swiss-French Sign Language (LSF-CH) version of BabelDr, a speech-enabled fixed phrase translator that was initially conceived to improve communication in emergency settings between doctors and allophone patients (Bouillon et al., 2021). In order to do so, we start off by explaining how we ported BabelDr in LSF-CH using both human and avatar videos. We first describe the creation of a reference corpus consisting of video translations done by human translators, then we present a second corpus of videos generated with a virtual human. Finally, we relate the findings of a questionnaire on Deaf users’ perspective on the use of signing avatars in the medical context. We showed that, although respondents prefer human videos, the use of automatic technologies associated with virtual characters is not without interest to the target audience and can be useful to them in the medical context.

Keywords
  • Access
  • Deaf people
  • Swiss-French Sign Language (LSF-CH)
  • BabelDr
  • Allophone patients
  • Avatars
  • Virtual characters
Citation (ISO format)
STRASLY, Irene et al. Healthcare Accessibility for the Deaf. In: Translation Technology in Accessible Health Communication. Meng Ji, Pierrette Bouillon and Mark Seligman (Ed.). Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2023. p. 152–174. (Studies in Natural Language Processing) doi: 10.1017/9781108938976.007
Main files (1)
Book chapter (Published version)
Identifiers
ISBN9781108938976
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42downloads

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Creation08/10/2023 17:46:15
First validation12/01/2024 18:47:10
Update time12/01/2024 18:47:10
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