Testing AVATAR to sign in ASL

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
April 21, 2010

Hello Kate!

Thank you, Charles, for your feedback below...

And I took the entire test, Kate...I went to this url:

Test Avatar using SignWriting
http://www.cs.uwc.ac.za/~kmoemedi/index.php?phaseno=1&pageno=1

And I enlarged my screen so I could see the detail and enjoyed taking the test!!

I wrote detailed feedback in the place where you asked for feedback during the test...I hope you got my responses...

I really enjoyed this...Your testing web site is really well done - just that alone is a big accomplishment, let alone all the work that goes behind programming an avatar...so you are doing an excellent job.

Thank you for asking for our opinions - this will help make your AVATAR used by signers - and it is great for SignWriting too...

So I hope others take the test too...

Tell us how it goes, Kate, and what you learned...

Val ;-)


--------------------


On Apr 21, 2010, at 11:12 AM, Charles Butler wrote:

> Having worked with avatar programs in Brazil before, I have a few observations.
>  
> 1) Avatars may have a default beginning setting, this one seems to have one, but that default setting is not the start point of each sign.  Each sign has a beginning and an end.  With this avatar, all signs start at the waist, not at the natural beginning of each sign.
>  
> 2) Some orientations seemed to have been viewed backward.  This may be because of a misunderstanding of avatars and expressive signwriting.  The one sign I can rememer is understand.  The palm facing is toward the writer, not away from the writer.  The avatar signs away from the writer.
>  
> 3) Unsure which fingerspelling system is being used.  A sign that says AUD is apparently AVD, which may be some other fingerspellings outfit, but not ASL. 
>  
> 4) The sign translated "ASL" reads as "RV" in ASL, so I'm not sure which signed language is being produced. 
>  
> Charles

-------


On Apr 21, 2010, at 10:53 AM, Valerie Sutton wrote:

> SignWriting List
> April 21, 2010
> 
> Hello Kate!
> Thank you for the new link, and the link is working ;-))
> 
> I hope other List members will help Kate test the AVATAR software...
> 
> One feedback I can give you immediately...for me (and I am curious how others feel about this)....for me, it seems very dark to see the hands and differentiate between the hand and the face...the dark background doesn't give me enough contrast to really be able to see what the Avatar is doing...
> 
> So I need to close all the blinds so the light from the windows in my room give me a clearer view on my screen, and I need to enlarge the screen to be able to see the hands of the Avatar...
> 
> Is there any way you can make the Avatar more easily visible? I have very good eyesight, but not everyone who uses sign language has good eyesight...some are actually partially blind...so the more you can make it easy to see, the better for your work...I realize creating a light background may be hard to do...I hope it can be done though...because other Avatars do not have this problem...
> 
> I will now try to do the test and look forward to telling you what I learn!
> 
> Val ;-)
> 
> ----------
> 
> On Apr 21, 2010, at 10:32 AM, Kate wrote:
> 
>> Hi Val and all..
>> 
>> My aplologies.
>> The link has now changed to 
>> http://www.cs.uwc.ac.za/~kmoemedi/index.php?phaseno=1&pageno=1
>> 
>> Thank you all!
>> Kate
>> 
>> 
>> ----------
>> 
>> 
>> On Apr 21, 2010, at 8:31 AM, Kate wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi Val and all
>>> 
>>> I am trying to do a quick test to determine if people can understand the signs performed by my avatar.
>>> I've generated 10 ASL Signs using my system.
>>> 
>>> I would like to request for people that know/understand ASL and SignWriting to test my system.
>>> The test involves each participant viewing 10 signs. For each sign, the person will be asked to
>>> type what they think the sign they saw was. Thereafter, the same video will be replayed showing
>>> what we supposed the sign was in English and in SignWriting. The person can compare the SignWriting
>>> to the video and state, with comments, whether the video corresponds to the SignWriting shown.
>>> 
>>> The following link starts the test: http://172.16.39.29/index.php?phaseno=1&pageno=1
>>> 
>>> Kind regards,
>>> Kate
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>