Sign Language Accessibility for e-Governance Services

Project Incharge : Prof. Dr. Prema Nedungadi

Project Incharge : Dr. Geetha M.

Center : AmritaCREATE

School : School of Computing

Funded by : MeitY, Government of India

Fund Amount : ₹255.64 lakhs

Duration : 2.5 years

In India, e-Governance accessibility for Divyangjan is a challenge. Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham and CDAC are developing an accessibility interface integrating Indian Sign Language (ISL) into e-Governance services to make e-Governance accessible for deaf individuals.

The updated interface will be implemented across 25 UMANG services, increasing accessibility. The UMANG platform is a mobile e-Governance app developed jointly by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the National e-governance Division (NeGD) to promote Mobile Governance in India.

As part of the project, the team at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham will focus on:

Using artificial intelligence and machine learning for sign language recognition of questions and vocabulary in FAQs across 25 UMANG services and,
Building a Chat System for the hearing impaired, so they are able to get responses to their queries using Indian Sign Language.
Interaction between the user and chatbot would be via webcam—for asking queries by the user, and corresponding answer videos played on the chatbot, as response back to the user.

Technology