New Language Technologies for ASL| USC Viterbi

USC Researchers achieved 91 percent accuracy at computer recognition of signs

While there is “talk to text,” there’s no equivalent tool for American Sign Language (ASL) to be automatically recognized and translated into text. New research and language technologies developed by scholars affiliated with the USC School of Advanced Computing’s Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science might help future researchers who aim to build translation tools.

The team’s innovations outlined in paper presented at the 2025 Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics conference, are in developing a machine learning model that treats sign language data as a complex linguistic system rather than just a mere translation of English. The team led by Lee Kezar, then a doctoral candidate in computer science out of Professor Jesse Thomason’s GLAMOR (Grounding Language in Actions, Multimodal Observations, and Robotics) Lab, introduces a new natural language processing model, incorporating the spatial and semantic richness of ASL, treating it as a primary language with its own syntax.

The first step for developing a means of ASL recognition which demands an understanding of the language’s specific nuances—and how natural signing may be divided into phonological features, such as the ‘C handshape’ or ‘produced on the forearm’” for a computer.

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Hearing Loss Statistics 2024: More Common Than You Might Think | NCOA Adviser

  • Hearing loss affects about 60.7 million Americans age 12 and older. About 15.5% (44.1 million) of American adults age 20 and older have some level of hearing loss. [1] [2] [3]
  • Of people age 65 and older, 31.1% experience hearing loss, while 40.3% of adults age 75 and older experience hearing loss. [1]
  • Around the world, about 70 million people are deaf (complete hearing loss). [4]
  • Studies show approximately 28.8 million American adults could significantly benefit from wearing a hearing aid. [5]
  • Only 16% of people age 20–69 have ever used a hearing aid, while just 30% of those age 70 and above have done so. [5]
  • Hearing loss is on the rise in the United States and is expected to almost double by the year 2060. [2]

Our hearing ability can greatly impact our health. And hearing loss is a common and widespread issue worldwide.

Did you know 1.5 billion people—20% of the world’s population—have some degree of hearing loss? [6] It’s currently the third-leading chronic health condition in the United States and cases are rapidly increasing. [7] Fortunately, half of all global cases are preventable through public education, early identification, and timely treatment. [6]

In order to understand the true scope of the issue, our Reviews Team dug into the latest research to help you protect your hearing and address suspected hearing loss.

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Sign language plays key role in d/Deaf children’s education, study shows | phys.org

Ensuring d/Deaf children become bilingual in sign language and English should be a key priority for policymakers and teachers because this plays an important role in their education, a new study says.

Curriculum and instruction in deaf education should provide opportunities for children to actively use sign language in schools.

British Sign Language (BSL) should be used as part of children’s spoken and written language development, particularly considering its significance for reading development. The study shows how skills transfer from sign language to support a wide range of spoken and written language abilities. The findings are published in the journal Review of Education.

There are many debates on how to best educate d/Deaf students for success in schools. Growing numbers of d/Deaf children are now educated in mainstream schools, where they will not get the same exposure to BSL.

The systematic review, of 70 studies, allowed researchers to identify close relationships between many “competencies” of sign language and spoken and written language.

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Deaf people as interpreters ‘shifts the world’ | bbc.com

Interpretation is a cornerstone of communication for deaf people who, without that real-time translation, may not be able to follow all that is being said.

But deaf people do not only benefit from interpreters, some wish to themselves provide the service to deaf communities, assisting in environments and scenarios where otherwise communication may prove challenging.

Now it is hoped a £600,000 research project – conducted in part by the University of Wolverhampton – will “shift the world”; allowing deaf people to receive training and boost employment opportunities in the field, and in turn, assist wider deaf communities to seek multiple professions.

“It’s quite nice to suddenly get a big lump of money,” said Dr Christopher Stone from the university, who will lead the three-year project alongside professors at the University of Toulouse and the University of Berlin.

Part of the work will explore differences between the UK, France and Germany in how deaf people help others understand what is being translated.

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Mapping Hearing Loss in the USA | SoundCheck

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Hearing Loss Linked to Dementia in Older Adults | Neuroscience News

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