Speech to Sign Language Converter developed by NIC, Chhattisgarh has won the E-lets Award for Digital Excellence under the category ‘Digital Innovations’. Dr. A.K. Hota, SIO, NIC, Chhattisgarh received the award in the virtual Elets Knowledge Exchange Summit and Awards 2020 on 11th December 2020.
Speech to Sign Language Converter is a tool developed for improving communication to persons with hearing and/ or speech impairment. Such persons use ‘Sign Language’ very comfortably. But a majority of the masses do not know sign language. After the enactment of the Right to Education for all, Divyang children are to be taught in the normal classes, as a part of inclusive education. But, many teachers, due to lack of sign languages are unable to give simple instructions to such challenged children. The awarded tool would first convert Speech to Text, and then the text is translated to Sign Language. Using this tool, teachers can speak on the microphone of the mobile and displaying the smartphone screen to Divyang children. Sign language is different for different natural languages and also it varies from region to region. Hence, the tool has been built first for Hindi for the Chhattisgarh state. The work is in progress to develop a model to convert Sign Language to Speech. This idea has won the second position in AI Ideathon 2020 organized by NIC.