Pakistan Sign Language: Computer Vision Analysis & Recommendations

Abstract

Pakistan sign language (PSL) is one of the sign languages of the world used by the Pakistani deaf community. Unfortunately, PSL has developed over the years without any greater attention from the state institutions. Most of the efforts for the development of PSL are done at the individual or group level, which is mostly   impressed by regional or traditional norms. That’s why, the learning and teaching PSL is being done in various regions as per their developed version of PSL. A communications barrier occurs when the deaf of two different regions interact with each other as they are trained on their own version of PSL. Another major problem is related to the communication with normal people. The normal people in our society are completely unaware from the signs/gestures of PSL. This communication barrier seizes the basic right of communication between a deaf and a normal. Our contribution in this regard is actually two tiers. First, to the best of our knowledge, we have tried to combine all the efforts made for the development of PSL till date. Second, as a computer vision researcher, we have tried to analyze all the imaging systems developed to aid deaf to deaf and deaf to normal communication of PSL. We are hopeful that this effort will surely help to develop the systems for reducing gap between deaf to deaf, deaf to normal and Pakistan deaf to any other deaf communication.