Sign language and Computing in a Developing Country: A Research Roadmap for the Next Two Decades in the Philippines

Sign Language and Computing in a Developing Country: A Research Roadmap for the Next Two Decades in the Philippines Liza B. Martinez a and Ed Peter G. Cabalfin b aPhilippine Deaf Resource Center, Inc. 27 K-7 Street, West Kamias, Quezon City 1102 Philippines lizamartinez@phildeafres.org bComputer Vision & Machine Intelligence Laboratory Department of Computer Science, College of Engineering University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City 1101 Philippines ed.cabalfin@gmail.com Abstract. This paper presents the current situation of Filipino Sign Language in the Deaf community and milestones in sign linguistics research. It highlights key computing research, particularly in Asia as well as enumerates research attempts to date of Philippine academic institutions which have applications in sign language recognition. This paper also touches on technical considerations, economic feasibility, partnerships and other sociocultural considerations appropriate for a developing country such as the Philippines. Keywords: Filipino Sign Language, Philippines, sign language recognition, research agenda 1. Introduction 1.1.The Filipino deaf community The last Census on disability reports over 121,000 Filipinos with hearing loss (NSO 2000). The deaf community (as with the other disabled sectors) remains widely marginalized from the mainstream of society, lagging behind recognized disadvantaged groups such as peasants, urban poor, fisher folk and indigenous peoples. Despite this, the Filipino Deaf remain a vibrant and dynamic assemblage of communities throughout the archipelago bound by their visual language. This complex spatial-gestural rule-governed mode of communication endows a strong sense of collective identity. Sign language is at the core of the progressive view of deafness as a culture, and of deaf people as a linguistic minority. 1.2.Research on Filipino Sign Language There are only several recent milestone studies on the visual-spatial language of the Filipino Deaf community (i.e., Filipino Sign Language or FSL) initiated by Filipinos themselves. In the seventies and eighties, publications by North American writers, drew largely from American Sign Language (ASL) and artificial sign systems to publish highly prescriptive material. The earliest descriptive works are comprised by the pioneering research of Liza Martinez on the 438 22nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation, pages 438–444 sociolinguistics and structure of FSL beginning in the early nineties. To date, the most comprehensive linguistics reference was initiated by Martinez herself (PDRC and PFD, 2004). Recent papers presented at the 9th Philippine Linguistics Conference covered several topics on the structure and sociolinguistics of FSL. Noteworthy also are the publications of the Philippine Federation of the Deaf on the use of sign language in the Philippines (2008), on regional variation (PFD, 2005, 2007), as well as by the Philippine Deaf Resource Center on applied issues (Tiongson and Martinez, 2007). 1.3.Current Issues on the Status and Use of Filipino Sign Language Filipino Sign Language has only recently begun to be documented because of the young state of sign linguistics research in the country. It is largely unrecognized by government in the language domains of schools, courtrooms, the workplace, hospitals and mass media. In the community, both deaf and hearing Filipinos may still disregard FSL as an authentic linguistic entity. …

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