ABSTRACT
This paper presents a mobile application for mute people who regularly go on a religious tour to communicate with people who are not familiar with sign language. It is really tough for mute people to make other people understand who are not familiar with the sign language. This problem becomes intense when they are traveling for religious purposes and they need to communicate with all sorts of people.
INTRODUCTION
Every year there is a large group of people frequently visit different parts of Bangladesh from time to time for religious purposes under the name of Tablighi Jamaat community. Some of the visitors are mute who are eager to communicate but face difficulties using sign language communication. There are some very useful mobile application to learn sign language have developed specially for third world countries like us. Still only people close to mute people use and familiar with sign language. However, they are very limited in numbers. As the mute people frequently travel, they need to communicate with people out in the world who are not familiar with sign language.
Many mute people become isolated or only mingle with only other mute people because they shy away to communicate with others. While traveling for the religious purpose. they face communication problem the most because most of the people they need to communicate with are not familiar with sign language. In the Tablighi Jamaat community, they always have one interpreter to manage a group of 15-16 mute people which is not feasible as this puts pressure on the interpreter. Even in Pakistan iPSL, a full rehabilitation of the deaf community is going on. This is fully based on Pakistani demography and a not applicable to Bangladesh even though this is quite encouraging for Bangladeshi perspective. In Spain, a beta system was introduced to translate and NID officers’ explanations into sign language. Even though it is a primitive level approach but this gives us the motivation to target a moderate segment of mute people and give them a simple way of communication.
For the above reasons, the motivation of our application is to offer a service to the mute community inside the Tablighi Jamaat community and also to mute people in particular. This work is a simple integrated system that can easily solve problems in their regular life with one application.
RELATED WORKS
Work in South Asia, A system using the data glove technique was introduced consisting of flex sensors that used to detect finger gestures and transmit the information to a PIC (Programmable Intelligent Computer) microcontroller to translate it to the English language. This is not feasible either as many mute people are too stubborn to use a hand glove and it is not easy to carry it always with them when they are on a journey. Image processing-based gesture recognition of sign language has been done in India. This work recognizes only English Alphabets so this work will not be practical enough for rural areas of Bangladesh where many mute people travel for religious purpose or otherwise.
International work, “TESSA” is an experimental system was made to aid transactions between a deaf person and someone who can hear by translating other person’s speech to sign language. Even though it is very useful for deaf people to communicate, it is not feasible for everyone as not all deaf people are mute and the other person cannot understand the sign language. An integrated mobile application was introduced to make communications between mute people and people who do not understand sign language. The main theme of that mobile application is to make the communication in English and Arabic. Even though the work is similar to our application but out application focuses on Bangladeshi mute people and mostly on them who frequently go on a religious tour. So, the basic needs of words are quite different from the existing application also our application will help mute people to communicate in Bengali which is more feasible than communicating in English in Bangladesh. A text-driven sign language deaf-mute sign language synthesis system was introduced. This is a useful tool for people who are able to talk but don’t know the sign language to convey their thoughts to deaf and mute people but mute people cannot convey their thoughts in the same way. Our application aims to cover the other way of communication. A work on American sign language to text translator application was also done for mute people to communicate. Even though it is a good approach towards the solution but this solution is not very feasible as it converts selected sign language to texts that is why we opted out for voice rather than text for more feasibility.
METHODOLOGY
Understanding people’s problem was our main research focus inquiry with understanding sign language of mute people and to communicate with them in daily life. We tried to find out about their life’s hurdle story in communicating mute people also tried to find out what are the most used talks mute people need to use so that we can sort out those talks and include those in our mobile application. The research was conducted from 20 June to 27 June 2018. In total, we worked over 18 hours of fieldwork in Dhaka. We conducted two focus groups of 4 and 5 participants per group respectively with 24 participants among them 21 were male and 3 were female aged between 18 to 48. We chose the focus group because it was easier to mingle with people from Tablighi Jamaat background share common experiences in dealing with mute people when it comes to communication. About 45 minutes on average was the time for Each focus group session that lasted. At the end of every focus group discussion, we asked the participants what topics or issues they would like to highlight the most in our research reports and in our application which we build for mute people, we gave them a chance to represent their voices in their own terms. We wanted our mobile app to reflect what a mute person might want to have for himself/ herself when he/she wants to communicate. The interviews took place in the place which participants chose to give them the highest comfort. We traveled to various places from mosque to participant’s house for this.
Participant Recruitment
For participant selection, we tried to focus on Tablighi Jamaat people who faced problems dealing with mute people and also those from Tablighi Jamaat who are quite expert in dealing with mute people. Except that we tried to reach people from different demography and age. In the case of women interviewees as all our group members were male we conducted the interviews through a female interviewer who wanted to help us voluntary. Two of them were in the focus group interview and one of them was individual. These 3 persons were not related to Tablighi Jamaat but they were deaf-mute people and we only have reached them with the help of female interviewer. We, the interviewers orally mentioned the purpose of our research and the affiliation of us. Participants of the Focus group were already known to each other, people from the same Jamaat. Depending upon age & demography, motivation varied. Female participants were familiar face of the interviewer so that the interviewer can reach them despite being a male.
Moderation and Incentives
In all interviews, one interviewer had the spontaneous conversation with the interviewee and another group member took the notes as we thought that would allow the interviewer to be more natural with the interviewee. Focus group moderators were male members of the group to leverage the common cultural ground. Incentives were determined via brainstorming in the group. we thanked all the participants for their time at the end of the interviews by all the members of the group who were present.
Analysis
All the interviews were conducted in local languages and translated into English in transcription. We have interviewed the mute people, the translator people who help the mute people, people who are involved with Tablighi Jamaat and the people who generally deal with the mute people in day to day life. The interview we took was on focus group discussion also on the individuals. Most of them were male and few were female. Inductive analysis was conducted on the raw interview data. We focused on stories about (1) how the mute people talks and makes a conversation with the general people in day to day life; (2) the problems the mute people are facing; (3) general people who are dealing with the mute people; (4) mute people who are able to run the android application; (5) mute people who are communicating with others without any help; (6) how general people communicate with the mute people when a session is going on. We conveyed the key themes & developed categories from a close reading of transcripts. A codebook was created based on the themes in which 4 top-level categories were included. four team members created a codebook (communication, time, understanding, anger issues) and several sub-categories e.g., group of people, isolation etc.). Codes were run through according to conducting research. Mute people found interest when we told them about the android application what we want to develop for them.
Research Ethics
To feel safe of our participants and to create a neutral comfort zone for them, we went to mosque and places where Tablighi Jamaat preaching occurs to interview imams and helping hand of the mosque also members of Tablighi Jamaat for them felt safe and comfortable. In case of general people with diverse occupations and age limit, we went to the place of participant’s choice i.e. coffee shop and their home. Having a comfortable, safe space was important as circumstantial interviews in crowded public place posed the possibility of other interviewees to feel more formal which could destroy up possibilities of the participant being spontaneous and compromise the accuracy of responses. Female participants were either our acquaintance or relatives. One of us interviewee and another one of us positioned himself at the back to avoid any sort of distraction between the interviewee participants. Verbal informed consent was obtained from all participants. More than 20 minutes were spent explaining the purpose of the interviews, answering any questions, and building rapport. Participants were made aware that they had the right to terminate the study at any point without forfeiting the incentive. A method of recording, notes were chosen as many of the participants refused to go on verbal recording or videotaping and participants were aware of the notes. All notes were scanned and stored in the Google Drive folder, with access limited to the research team.
FINDINGS
We found out a diverse opinion of people on this topic. As many of religious people in our country still are technology shy and have prejudice over technology so when you reached out people from Tablighi Jamaat, many of them did not like the idea of incorporating technology especially a mobile application to help mute people to communicate with people who do not understand sign language. On the other hand, common people from diverse occupation welcomed the idea of having a simple user-friendly Mobile application to help those to communicate with mute people without knowing sign language.
Common Problems Faced by Mute People and to Communicate with Mute People
We interviewed 24 people altogether. 22 of them expressed their struggle to communicate with mute people. Rest of 2 people were expert in mute people so they do not face problems. That makes 92% of all interviewees who faced problems communicating with mute people. Even the rest 8% means 2 people also expressed that they struggled to communicate with mute people when they were not familiar with sign language. From the interviewees’ experience, 12 out of 24 people expressed that mute people experience problems while looking for direction. That is 50% of the sample size. 33% of interviewees means 8 out of 24 people said that mute people experience problems when looking for essentials like water or food. Another 33% of people said that mute people face problems while asking questions during religious sessions and most times they shy away from asking the question itself. 100% of the interviewees agreed on the term that most mute people get angry if the other person does not understand his/her intention. 60% of interviewees agreed on the term that mute people cannot express their intentions when they are agitated.
Sign Language as a Medium
83% of the interviewees’ faced and mingled with mute people who use sign language and rest 17% means 4 out of 24 faced mute people who cannot use sign language. 71% of them means 17 out of 24 interviewees’ think that those mute people they interacted with are quite good at using sign language and rest 29% of them which is 7 out of 24 think that many mute people are not yet quite good at using sign language and they need to improve it to express their intention properly. 95% of interviewees’ think sign language is a very useful medium for mute people to express that is 23 out of 24 people.
Mobile Application as a Savior and Real-Life Solution
66% of whole interviewees means 16 out of 24 people think that a mobile application will be a good idea to help the mute people to communicate with people who do not understand sign language and most of them are common people from different demographic and age group. Most people from Tablighi Jamaat still think that mobile application will not be a good idea as they are still reluctant to use mobile application. 40% of them actually liked the idea of the mobile application. 55% of people means 14 out of 24 think that mobile application should be easier to use and developers of the application should focus on simplicity and practicality rather than fanciness. It should be user-friendly and data friendly both of these points were strongly mentioned by the interviewees. When we tried to relate functionality of a mobile application to communicate with mute people without an interpreter with the real-life problem stories that the interviewees’ shared, 71% of the time means 15 out of 21 real-life struggle story related to communication with mute people can be solved by a mobile application. Even when the problem is related to the Tablighi Jamaat community struggle story the percentage is even higher. 85% of the time means 12 out of 14 struggle story would not even be occurred if there was a simple mobile application to communicate with mute people and 65% of interviewee actually agreed with us on that.
DESIGN IMPLICATION
These features are chosen based on our findings. Audio, video, a picture for the sign language and book section also scheduling, push notification, navigation drawer, user feedback, available sign languages sections are necessary features for the mobile application. The main purpose is to give a smooth user experience by creating a simple practical look rather than fanciness. The focus of our mobile application is to make a simple tool for mute people to communicate with people who do not understand sign language. To keep it simplistic we gathered pieces of information on what are the common talks mute people need to use on daily basis and also when they go on religious tour. Our application will help them to translate the words into Bengali as Bengali is the main medium of communication in our country. To make it more user-friendly, video clips of sign language will also be played alongside the sound. As our mobile application is more focused on helping mute people on their religious journey. They often face problems while borrowing religious books from people and they often need those and cannot carry all of them hence we incorporated books section where all their necessary books will be uploaded and they can customize it according to their needs. There will also be a scheduling option to help them to keep their travel on sync as many of our interviewees wanted this option.
CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have presented a simple yet efficient mobile application for the mute people as they suffer in many ways. This application aims to help mute people by providing them with a simple communication tool for daily life use. This work mainly focuses on mute people who are on a religious journey called Tablighi Jamaat and this work tries to solve the problems they face with one single application. It can also come in handy for other mute people. Moreover, this application introduces an easy and attractive communication tool so that mute people are more eager to use it.
