Friday, November 15, 2013

DEAFining news - status report week 46

Group name: DEAFining news

What we have done.
This week we have discussed a lot on where we should go from here and try to define more exactly on what our solution would be because on the presentation last week we only had a dream scenario and one possible example of how we could reach, to a certain extent, this dream scenario. We also got feedback on the presentation that maybe we should try to think on a more futuristic solution than we had in mind at that time. So we have brainstormed around different solutions and tried to settle for one that we want to go through with for the rest of the course.

We still hadn’t tried to contact SVT so we e-mailed the lecturer in this course, Ulf Johansson, who is head of news at SVT, to see if he know anything about their work in bringing news to deaf people or if he know who to turn to at SVT. We also changed from doing a face-to-face interview to doing an e-mail interview with SDR (Sveriges Dövas Riksförbund). More on the reason of this further down.

What we will do.
Next we will wait for answers from SDR and SVT. We also need to investigate further on the technology that we want to use for our solution and think of how to package the final concept. An important task that is getting closer is also to start writing on our chapter for the book that will describe our project.

Problems encountered.
In order to gather more information about deaf people and how their situation is we wanted to talk with SDR. This because we know very little about  this subject but also to get more information regarding our how news is perceived by people with hearing impairments today. We encountered a problem though because in order to do face-to-face interviews we needed two interpreters and we couldn’t get those for the meeting we had booked with SDR this wednesday 13/11. So because of the time limit in this course we decided to do an email interview instead.

Changes in the project.
As said earlier, we have worked much this week on what our solution is going to be to our stated problem and to our dream scenario, which is that all news will be interpreted with sign language and that there will be news that are tailored to people with hearing impairments. What we presented on the mid-crit last week was a solution of automatic interpretation of news to sign language through an avatar. Through our brainstorming session we came up with a solution involving glasses (think Google Glasses) that will show the avatar and that will also involve acknowledgement of more senses like touch and smell. It will also be possible to film and so incorporate crowdsourcing in news, which is one aspect Rebekah talked about when we interviewed her. This makes it more futuristic, crowdsourced, and tailored for deaf people.

Resources. At the moment we are looking for resources regarding technology that is needed for our solution. Google glasses is an inspiration for us and so we have looked at that.

We also want to work with senses such as vibrations and smells so we have tried to gather information that could support such scenarios.

1 comment:

  1. Looks like you have come a little further in your work now. To me, this sounds more innovative and the result might also become more futuristic and fun. If you have problems reaching Ulf Johansson, try with Johan Hartman at SVT, who has worked a lot with the issue of news and TV tailored for deaf and other minorities. You can reach him at johan.hartman@svt.se (Say hello from me!) Good luck!

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