ISLHelper: A web based helper plugin for Indian Sign Language Jestin Joy ∗ jestinjoy@fsat.ac.in Federal Institute of Science And Technology (FISAT) Cochin, Kerala, India Sreeraj M sreeraj.sac@gmail.com Sree Ayyappa College Alappuzha, Kerala, India ABSTRACT Lack of learning tools is a hindrance in acquiring knowledge for deaf people. People associated with them fnd it difcult to com- municate because of the non availability of learning tools. Scale of research and availability of assistive software tools for deaf people is much less compared to technology based solutions for hear- ing peers. Getting to know sign equivalent of a word is not that easy when browsing a web page. User should use a multimedia dictionary to fnd the sign equivalent of a spoken language word. ISLHelper provides a solution to this problem by displaying Indian Sign Language(ISL) signs within a web page without navigating away. ISLHelper is available as a Firefox browser plugin. Results of usability study indicates that ISLHelper is favoured by participants. CCS CONCEPTS · Human-centered computing → Accessibility; Accessibility systems and tools; Accessibility technologies; · Applied com- puting → Computer-assisted instruction. KEYWORDS Sign Language, Accessibility, Web Browser, Dictionary ACM Reference Format: Jestin Joy and Sreeraj M. 2021. ISLHelper: A web based helper plugin for Indian Sign Language. In Asian CHI Symposium 2021 (Asian CHI Symposium 2021 ), May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3429360.3468200 1 INTRODUCTION According to the World Health Organization (WHO)[11], there are around 466 million people worldwide with disabling hearing loss. The 2011 census[3] report of India shows that there are 5,071,007 people with hearing disability, which accounts for 18.9% of the total disabled population. Learning to communicate through visual gestures or signs is very crucial for deaf people. There exist difer- ent sign languages in diferent parts of the world. Sign language has syntactic and morphological features like any other language. Lack of availability of multimedia sign dictionaries and absence of uniformity in the signs used are the two major obstacles in learning signs. Diferent people and diferent regions use diferent signs[9] ∗ Both authors contributed equally to this research. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for proft or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the frst page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s). Asian CHI Symposium 2021 , May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan © 2021 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-8203-8/21/05. https://doi.org/10.1145/3429360.3468200 to represent the same object or concept. When diferent teachers use diferent signs, it causes confusion and frustration to learn- ers making the acquisition of a sign language vocabulary difcult. To facilitate sign language teaching and learning, the help of sign language interpreters are also necessary. According to ofcial esti- mates, India has only 325 Indian Sign Language (ISL) interpreters 1 . The scale of research and availability of assistive technology products in learning is much less as compared to technology based solutions for general learning. Assistive technology products are gaining importance in disability space as more people have started using it. These technologies enable them to get in the mainstream and help them to access the facilities normal people enjoy. Com- puter Assisted Language Learning (CALL) is defned as the use of computers to learn a language in an interactive manner. The aim of CALL is to improve the teaching/learning process. Further, Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL)[7], which is a special type of CALL, has made the learning portable with the help of mobile based mechanisms like mobile phones, tablets etc. In this context, browser based and mobile based sign dictionary applications play a major role in helping the teaching learning process of diferently abled. Unlike print media, it is very easy to display multimedia content on such platforms making it possible to develop applications that can show sign language along with text on a web page. ISLHelper is a browser extension in this technology space. It requires no additional functionality to make it work, other than a browser. From the user perspective this makes the application convenient to use. 2 RELATED WORKS Dictionary is a very important resource for any language. Mul- timedia dictionaries are the preferred medium for sign language dictionaries[1, 5] because of its ability to present movements. Web and mobile based dictionaries exist for sign languages[8, 10]. In these dictionaries, user can search for a word and play the corre- sponding sign. A web browser plug-in that allows users to click on a word to show the corresponding American Sign Language (ASL) signs was proposed by Hariharan, Al-khazraji, and Huenerfauth[2]. Initial results showed that participants preferred ASL popup tool for sign language support, as compared to having no support provided. eSIGN[12] (Essential Sign Language Information on Government Networks) was developed with the aim of providing deaf people access to public and government information/services in sign lan- guage. eSIGN is equipped with a virtual avatar for providing in- formation in sign language. Petrie, Fisher et al.[6] proposed a tool tip based mechanism for helping deaf users understand toolbar icons. Their study found that deaf users fnd Sign Language based 1 ISLRTC Sign Interpreter Directory: http://islrtc.nic.in/ 149