Friday, November 10, 2017

What's wrong with Language Gloves?

image from UCSD academic paper
published in the PLOS One journal
describing a gesture-recognizing glove
 
What's wrong with wearable technologies like the sign-language glove? Linguist and writer Michael Erard writes that the effort is "rooted in the preoccupations of the hearing world, not the needs of Deaf signers." The gesture-recogniztion glove overlooks the "intricacies of the language, as well as the needs of signers." Despite it's high cost and irrelavancy to signers, the technology has won prize money for its creators and "college students were gaining accolades and scholarships for technologies based on an element of Deaf culture, while Deaf people themselves are legally and medically underserved." Read more in the Atlantic about Why Sign-Language Gloves Don't Help Deaf People here.