| Many deaf people have been forced to learn to lip | | | | between sign language and speech, or interpreting |
| read, or were marginalised because they were | | | | speech in some other way (by writing or by clear |
| unable to function as well as hearers. Those lucky | | | | speech). The interpreter must also keep the |
| enough to be raised with or learn a sign language | | | | deafblind person informed of what is happening |
| find a whole new world opened to them; they are | | | | around him; who is coming, who is going, who is |
| able to express their thoughts as easily as a | | | | talking, what does the room look like. Deaf talk to |
| speaker and, through translation or the learning of | | | | themselves with sign language, but never sing to |
| sign languages by hearers, step across the divide | | | | themselves. |
| between the environments of sound and silence. | | | | Deafness is much more than a physiological |
| When conducting user-based evaluations, several | | | | phenomenon. It is a way of life. Deaf individuals |
| cultural and linguistic characteristics of members of | | | | with visual impairments draw near to read the |
| the American Deaf community must be taken | | | | text interpretation. Meanwhile, a smaller number |
| into account so as to ensure the accuracy of | | | | of individuals might be reading the text typed |
| evaluations involving these users. This article | | | | directly to a computer monitor or TTY visual |
| describes an implementation and user-based | | | | display. Deaf people, like Micheal, are finally able to |
| evaluation (by native ASL signers) of a prototype | | | | hear, understand and speak the common language |
| ASL natural language generation system that | | | | of their hearing peers over the telephone, face to |
| produces sentences containing classifier predicates, | | | | face or even through video conferencing over the |
| which are frequent and complex spatial | | | | internet. And furthermore they are able to watch |
| phenomena that previous ASL generators have | | | | television with them through the real-time |
| not produced. | | | | captioning and live interpretation. |
| Deafblind interpretation is not only translating | | | | |