Research into Digital Representations of Sign Language

[Saduf Naqvi]

Dear ALl,

I have just signed onto the list and I would like to firstly say Hello!

Let me introduce myself, I am a research student from Goldsmiths College
University of London, and am researching Deaf views on Digital Representations
of Sign Language.

When I say Digital Representations of Sign Language (DRSL) I mean methods of
communicating to the d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing community without the use of a
an actual physical signer.  It is with the use of other systems, such as Video
systems where you have full recordings of signers, animation systems that use
Avatars (Virtual Humans) to sign information, or notation systems that depict
signs or pictorially represent information.  All three of these systems keep
within the visual style and nature of sign language, however they are all rated
very differently.

I am currently in the final year of my thesis and am going to conduct my major
study, this will be comparatively evaluating DRSLs.  Obviously I would like to
include a notation system, and I thought a very widely used and popular system
is the SignWriting system.

So this leads me to what I am doing here.  I would like to know more about
SignWriting, do you all view it as a method of representing sign language
through a series of graphics/images.  Also when I do get to including this in my
research, I would like some advice on how to best represent the information I
would like to show through SignWriting, how to write it correctly etc.  I don't
want to make mistakes, I would like the consultation of the experts (you all!!!)

I will have more details of the information that will need translating into
SignWriting early next week, and more information on the study itself by early
next week aswell.  Anyone interested please let me know and I'll be more than
happy to send information. 

Also if anyone is interested in participation in this research, please email me
I would love to have as many participants as possible to give a wide range of
results, it should be a very interesting study.

I look forward to hearing from you all.

take care

Saduf

-- 
Miss Saduf Naqvi,
S.Naqvi at gold.ac.uk
Research Student,
Goldsmiths College - University of London,
New Cross,
London,
SE14 6NW,
020-7919-7462