Punjabi University develops Announcement System at Public places for Deaf

 : Research Centre for Technology Development for Differently Abled Persons, Department of Computer Science, Punjabi University Patiala, to the best of the knowledge, being the first such centre in India is continuously working for the welfare of differently abled persons by developing software for making their lives better.Recently, on 11th March 2020, two mobile applications – one on color detection for blind and one on Child Assessment in Punjabi was released by the Dr. B.S.Ghuman, former Vice Chancellor, Punjabi University Patiala. Earlier, on 3rd December, 2017, Centre Coordinator, Prof. Vishal Goyal and his research mate Dr. Lalit Goyal had released their Machine translation system for Simple English sentences to Synthetic animated Indian Sign Language(ISL) videos.Dr. Goyal’s team including their Ph.D., M.Phil., M.Tech., and MCA research scholars were working day and night for extending this system for complex and compound sentences. There were number of challenges for the implementation of this system such as no pre-defined grammar rules for conversion of complex and compound sentences into ISL, no Signing Gesture Markup Language(SIGML) dictionary, even very less human videos for words to be used for translation system. It was very difficult to work without any funding but it is appreciable that this software has been extending without any financial help from anywhere.Now, this system will be made public today on Word Disability Day. Through this system, any English text can be converted into equivalent ISL animated video on the click of the button. This will help in converting the study material etc. into ISL on the click of the button. Dr. Lalit Goyal told that due to various challenges involved in this work, they have tried to make the system accurate but still there may be some issues regarding the conversion of English text to ISL videos. We are still working on this system to get more and more accuracy and we will continue to work so as to develop a perfect software.
Another gift to deaf and dumb given by Prof. Vishal Goyal and Dr. Lalit Goyal is announcement system at public places in their own language which is Indian Sign Language(ISL). To their best of the knowledge, this is world’s first such working system. This will also be released today on World disability day during the Cultural Evening celebration by Special Olympics Bharat Punjab Chapter. During this function Principal Secretary, Ministry of Social Justice and Welfare, Chandigarh and Director Sports and Youth Affairs, Punjab Mr. DPS Kharbanda, IAS will be releasing this system. Dr. Goyal used to recall the part of video of “Sugamaya Bharat Abhiyam” in which one deaf person is requesting a woman in his own languge (ISL) to tell what is being announced on the railway station as he cannot hear. Idea striked to their mind and they converted this idea into reality. Dr. Vishal Goyal and Dr. Lalit Goyal created the announcement system not only for Railway stations but also for airports. Now, if Govt. implements their developed announcement system on railway stations and airports, it will be boon for hearing imparied people as they can understand what announcements are being made on the public places. Even, it would be proud for India as it would be the only country in the world to implement such software at the railway stations.Dr. Goyal stated that they faced a lot of challenges in collecting the list of announcements made at railway stations and airports. Further they said that all the collected announcements are divided into two categories- static and dynamic. Static announcements are those which are standard announcements without any change in the announcement.
For example, “Take Care of Your Luggage from Thieves”, “Wish you a Happy Journey”, “Donot Accept any Eatable from Stranger” etc. Dynamic announcement are those which have some words like time, platform number etc that may change. These announcements are related to arrival/departure/cancellation of trains etc. Dr. Goyal added that the announcement system would be the first such Make in India software for hearing imparied communityDr. Goyal further added that his Ph.D. research scholar Gurdeep Singh is working for developing the translation system for Punjabi text to ISL synthetic animations. His one of the Ph.D. Scholar Annu Rani is developed automatic telecast of news in ISL for deaf and dumb persons which is unique in itself. Ms Krishma was ISL interpreter for all this research work. Ms Deepali, Mr. Rakesh Kumar, Ms Annu Rani, Ms Gurdeep Kaur, Ms Amandeep Kaur, and other MCA and M.Tech. scholars has worked very hard in a team for the completion of this project.Dr. S.K.Arora, Principal, DAV College, Jalandhar apprecated the efforts done by the research scholars for creating the software which are helpful for differently abled people. Prof. DharamVeer Sharma, Professor and Head, Department of Computer Science and Dr. Gurpreet Singh Josan, Co-Coordinator of this research centre appreciated the research being done by Prof. Vishal Goyal and Prof. Lalit Goyal for this community.On this occasion, Col. Karminder Singh praised the software developed by Dr. Vishal Goyal and his team.On this occasion, Chief Guest of this program Mrs Vini Mahajan IAS, Chief Secretary Pb., Sh. Krishan Kumar, IAS,Hon’ble Education Secretary, Mrs. Raji P Srivastava IAS, Principal Secretary, SSWCD, and Mr Vipul Ujwal IAS, Director SSWCD Cum Disability Commissioner, Punjab were also present.