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As many as three million school age children between the ages of 5 and 14 years, live with severe to profound hearing loss in Nigeria. Many of these Deaf or Hard of Hearing (DHH) children developed their hearing loss later in life, non-congenitally, hence their parents are hearing. While their teachers in the Deaf schools they attend can often communicate effectively with them in dialects of American Sign Language (ASL), the unofficial sign lingua franca in Nigeria, communication at home with other family members is challenging and sometimes non-existent. This results in adverse social consequences including stigmatization, for the students.With the recent successes of AI in natural language understanding, the goal of automated sign language understanding is becoming more realistic using neural deep learning technologies. To this effect, the proposed project aims at co-designing and developing an ongoing AI-driven two-way sign language interpretation tool that can be deployed in homes, to improve language accessibility and communication between the DHH students and other family members. This ensures inclusive and equitable social interactions and can promote lifelong learning opportunities for them outside of the school environment.
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Kulaale (Chad) – Language Snapshot
Kulaale (also known as Fania), is a Bua (Adamawa, Niger-Congo) language spoken by approximately 1,000 people, who call themselves Kulaawe [kʊ̀lááwɛ́] or Eywe [ʔèywè]. They live in a dozen villages in the southernmost part of the Guéra region in Chad. The Kulaawe are traditionally agriculturalists: they grow mainly sorghum and millet, as well as maize, groundnut and beans. The inhabitants of the village of Tile Nugar are additionally historically blacksmiths, and used to extract, melt, smelt, and forge iron. The Kulaawe are all Muslim today, although their conversion is relatively recent, and aspects of their pre-Islamic practices still survive. Many Kulaawe also live in town, mostly Sarh and N’Djamena, where the language is usually not passed on to the younger generations. In general, the language and the traditions it carries are under threat due to rapid economic and demographic change in the country.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1953310
- PAR ID:
- 10314607
- Editor(s):
- Austin, Peter K.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Language documentation and description
- Volume:
- 17
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1740-6234
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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