Vivo’s Sign Language Interpreter Function Revolutionizes Language Accessibility

Vivo’s Sign Language Interpreter app has revolutionized and diversified language accessibility, taking it to new heights on the National Hearing Day. It can convert the voice of a hearing person into sign language and text in real-time.

Vivo’s Sign Language Interpreter app

The app can also broadcast the sign language movements of the hearing-impaired person in text and voice. This has brought about a new relationship between the hearing-impaired group, and the hearing group who do not understand sign language. Hearing-impaired people, with the help of sign language interpreters, can communicate more smoothly with their family and friends. They can also order meals and shop conveniently.

Experts say speech-to-text, text-to-speech, text-to-sign language and sign language recognition-to-text are the core technologies for barrier-free communication. There are challenges in sign language recognition, such as how to accurately track finger joint movements in a small space, recognize their direction and movement trajectory, and how to deal with the unique grammatical order and omitted expressions of sign language, as well as the similarity between sign language movements and containment issues.

Keeping this in mind, the OriginOS technology R&D team integrated AI and other technologies to attain smooth mutual translation from sign language to text, and then to voice. Currently, sign language interpreters can recognize 1,200 sign language vocabulary, with over 80 percent accuracy rate. This is equivalent to the level of Chinese Level 4.

The OriginOS technology R&D team will continue to develop technology and improve products. They plan to upgrade the sign language recognition technology for Vivo’s Sign Language Interpreter app to cover the sixth level of Chinese; the translation function will optimize more usage scenarios.