The Consignos Project will Provide a Virtual Language Sign Interpreter for Turism and Transport Services

Indra, the premier IT company in Spain and a leading IT multinational in Europe, leads the Consignos project. It seeks to create a 3D animated avatar capable of recognising voice and who can translate into Spanish Language Sign to make tourism and transport services more accessible for the hearing impaired. This is a two-year experimental project within the framework of the Plan Avanza of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce, partially financed by The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and has an execution period of 2 years.

Consignos seeks to facilitate communication with the hearing impaired by using an animated character. It will provide access to the contents and services offered by the new technologies as well as interaction. The technology developed will be employed in the design and creation of accessible information systems. Thanks to the solution, the hearing impaired will be able to understand the information as for them, language sign is their natural way of communicating since in many occasions they have difficulties understanding written language.

 Besides Indra, coordinator of the project through its Software Labs network, the consortium comprises Madrid's Regional Transport Consortium (EMT) and The Spanish Tourism Quality Institute (ICTE), The Polythechnic University of Madrid (UPM), The University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM), the firm Ambiser and the CNSE Foundation (The National Confederation of Deaf People) with the objective of removing communication barriers.
The solution developed by Consignos will be the first prototype to recognise voice, and translate into Spanish sign language using an animated character although there are other similar systems in other languages (English).

Participation of future users
In order to guarantee its usefulness and application, hearing impaired people will try the system. They will participate in all the stages of the project and will assess its features in two pilot tests.

The first pilot will take place in the scenario of public transport, EMT. Even though it is not decided yet, the test will be carried out at the information points of the consortium, located in Plaza de Castilla in Madrid.

The second pilot will be conducted in the hotel sector, in cooperation with ICTE, specifically applied to the check-in and check-out computerised services. Intur Palacio San Martín Hotel, in Madrid, will cooperate with the project providing the initial information.

Research applied to accessibility
The Consignos project is based on previous research projects conducted by some members of the consortium. For instance, project GANAS (Generator of Automatic Animation for Sign Language) developed by Indra and UCLM represented a step forward in the generation of animated sign language interpreters. UPM also developed a project of translation of voice into Spanish sign language in cooperation with the CNSE which final users with disabilities evaluated in a real scenario, in this case during the renewal of the driving license.

The knowledge gained will be very useful to achieve the objectives of the project which also envisages the development of new translation techniques besides a new virtual character whose realistic movements and reusability will represent a major breakthrough.

Even though the technology developed by the project will be employed in the design and development of accessible information technology systems for the hearing impaired, it could also be applied to different areas: games for children with hearing problems, e-learning and the educational offer for people with hearing impairment, video interpretation systems or signing of multimedia contents.

Commitment to accessible technologies
Consignos is in line with Indra’s commitment to accessible technologies which are within the framework of the company’s corporate responsibility strategy. The objective of Accessible Technologies is to offer people with disabilities access to technology as well as social and labour integration by means of state-of-the-art solutions and services. Indra has developed more than R&D+i projects in this area and has five Chairs of Investigation in Accessible Technologies in cooperation with Adecoo Foundation and different universities.

Indra
Indra is the premier Information Technology company in Spain and a leading IT multinational in Europe and Latin America. It is ranked as the second European company in its sector according to investment in R&D with nearly € 500 M during the last three years. In 2010 revenues reached € 2,557 M of which a 40% came from the international market. The company employs more than 30,000 professionals and has clients in more than 100 countries.