Inspiration
The introduction of the Sign-Language club made us begin to recognize the hardships and alienation deaf people experience. This program was made with the intention to help all people learn at least minimal ASL so they can communicate with people who are hard of hearing.
What it does
The program asks the user to enter in predefined words/phrases and shows the user a video on how to sign the word/phrase they chose. As the videos are hosted on Youtube and not locally, the list of definitions can be expanded easily over time.
How we built it
Through the use of the Java programming language and Eclipse, we were able to code the program. The "vlcj" library was crucial to us as it allowed us to connect to Youtube to play the videos in the program. The library contained methods to help us connect to the internet and format the videos in the player. Additionally, the Google Cloud API was used in order to attempt to allow Speech to Text integration. We used the resources provided by MLH in order to create Google Cloud accounts and try to incorporate the Speech to Text API into the program.
Challenges we ran into
One big challenge we ran into was creating a successful loop around the main part of the program, as the library we used was very temperamental. Slight code changes could move us ten steps back in the coding process. Additionally, working with the Google Cloud API was extremely difficult. The Speech to Text API was very hard to use and required many in-depth steps. In the end, we got very close to our final goal of complete integration. The code we had to run through required us to get help and collaborate with peers.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud the program achieves the goals we set for it in the design stage, considering our limited amount of time and lack of resources going into the hackathon.
What we learned
We learned how to pull Youtube videos from the internet into Java, we learned how to create binary search trees, and how to work with the Google Cloud API service.
What's next for ASL To You
We are planning on increasing the number of words we can translate and their accuracy. We also are interested in expanding the program into other mediums such as mobile and web.
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