A new university professor is using his computer skills to help members of the deaf community learn American Sign Language.

Vassilis Athitsos, computer science assistant professor, said his motivation for his current research involving sign language started nearly eight years ago when he took an ASL class.

“When I took sign language, I felt I was the worst student in the class,” Athitsos said.

He said he did well in his previous language courses but had a tough time with sign language. He became frustrated with the lack of study materials available.

“If you don’t know a sign, there’s no way to look it up,” he said.

Athitsos said his frustration with the one-sided nature of ASL dictionaries and study materials prompted him to work on a solution that would enable people to look up signs according to their movements using a camera-equipped computer.

“It’s something I would really have used when I was a student,” he said.

Stanley Sclaroff, Boston University computer science chair, is collaborating with Athitsos in his research. Sclaroff expressed similar frustrations with ASL dictionaries and also highlighted a few deficiencies.

“At present, what would one do if encountering a new sign in use?” he said. “The best dictionaries at the moment include some video examples, but the index of signs is keyed in English. ASL and English are completely different languages. Imagine trying to look up a new English word you’ve heard, but using a Cantonese character set?”

Sclaroff said their goal is to provide gesture-based search methods to the deaf community as well as parents of deaf children and students learning ASL.

“There is an ever-expanding availability of digital video recordings of ASL,” he said. “Literature, plays, poetry, news reports, et cetera. Providing a gesture-based search engine, a sign language Google, would help to quickly sift through such content so that those familiar with ASL have equal access in the digital age.”

Athitsos said he sees his research benefiting a wide range of people not limited to members of the deaf community.

“It would help people like me who are peripherally involved with sign language,” he said.

Athitsos and his fellow researchers were recently awarded a $900 thousand grant from the National Science Foundation to continue their research. He said he is glad to have the funding because he doesn’t see his research as a short-term project but has high hopes for its future.

“This is work for several years to come,” he said. “It would be great if this system could be deployed in schools where children could find them useful.”

Carole Neidle, Boston University French and linguistics professor, said she has known and worked with Athitsos for nearly nine years.

“He was a student in the computer science department when we first met, and we have had a very productive collaboration — most recently while he was a post-doc here at [Boston University].” Neidle said.

Presently, Boston professors Neidle and Sclaroff are Athitsos’ only collaborators. Neidle said she doesn’t see the physical distance between them being a problem.

“For most of our collaboration, we have been working at relatively close range, but even then, much of our communication has been electronic,” she said. “I’m confident that distance won’t be a problem for the new project that we’re undertaking.”

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