Indian Sign Language

Sign language is the medium of communication for the hearing impaired people. It uses gestures instead of sound to convey meaning. It combines hand-shapes, orientation and movement of the hands for conveying messages. It is not universal and just like spoken language, it has regional dialects. American Sign Language (ASL), British Sign Language(BSL), Indian Sign Language (ISL) etc. are some of the common sign languages in the world. In India, over 2 million people are deaf. They find it difficult to communicate with the normal people as the hearing or normal people are unfamiliar of sign language. There arises the need for sign language interpreters who can translate sign language to spoken language and vice versa. But, the availability of such interpreters is limited and expensive. This resulted in the development of Indian sign language recognition systems which could automatically translate the signs into corresponding text without the help of sign language interpreters. Such system scan help in the development of deaf community through human computer interaction.