Research on communicational support by sign language for the Hearing Disabled from a cognitive scientific perspective

听力障碍群体的目标是利用信息和通信终端为听力障碍者提供沟通支持。它还致力于从工程学和认知科学的角度研究和开发用于识别、生成、编码和传输的系统，以及支持这些系统的基础技术。根据我们调查的听障人士的需求，我们提出了为听障人士提供必要的沟通支持的方法。听障人群分为手语感知与编码、手语动画生成、手语识别、听障人群需求调查四个亚组。我们与视障人群一起成立了扩展听力障碍工作组，对口语的音素进行了详细的分析。工作组举行了几次会议和工作营，致力于开发SIGNDEX V3，计划利用SIGNDEX V2的成果，解决日语手语的鲜明特征、音素和语素问题。到目前为止，我们已经确定了如何描述明显的特征，以及如何提取语素。我们明年将继续这个工作组。我们还研究了脑力劳动的问题，这是手语使用者在互动交流中所承受的精神压力。我们发现NASA-TLX对于测量脑力劳动的程度是足够有效的。我们的发现将发表在电子、信息和通信工程研究所的期刊上，以及人类界面学会的期刊上。四个小组继续致力于如何共享他们的数据，统一评估方法，并协调小组的任务。

The hearing impairment group has aimed at the communication support using information-and-communication terminals for the hearing impaired people. It has also aimed at the research and development of systems for recognition, generation, coding, and transmission in the view point of engineering and cognitive science, together with fundamental technologies for their support. We have proposed ways of the communication support necessary for the hearing impaired, based on their needs that we have investigated.The hearing impairment group has four subgroups for: sign language perception and coding, sign language animation generation, sign language recognition, and investigation of the hearing impaired people's needs.We have set up the extended hearing impairment working group along with the visual impairment group, which has analyzed phonemes of oral languages in detail. Holding several meetings and work camps, the working group has worked on the development of sIGNDEX V3, which plans to tackle the problems of distinctive features, phonemes, and morphemes of Japanese Sign Language, utilizing the outcomes of sIGNDEX V2. We have so far determined how to describe the distinctive features, and how to extract the morphemes. We continue this working group next year.We have also worked on a problem of mental workload, which is mental stress that sign language users undergo during interactive communication. We have found that NASA-TLX is effective enough for measuring the degree of mental workload.Our findings will appear in journals such as the one of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineering, and the one of Human Interface Society.The four subgroups continue to work on how to share their data, to unite the evaluation methods, and to coordinate the tasks of the subgroups.