 I've been meaning to write alt texts for pictures of sign language gestures. It's super hard to describe hand position in a way that you can actually visualize them, and I'm starting to wonder if there isn't prior art for these. I realize that the overlap of blind people who sign must be super small, but I'd still like to have them as to have textual descriptions of the gestures for plain-text documentation. Any suggestion welcome ✋ 20 comments
 @neauoire yes, but it really took a solid moment of thought, and im not sure i’m right. especially for “b thumb”—i decided this meant doing the finger-spelling b. and “counterclockwise from the signers perspective”, i had to double-check 😅 @mood ah yes, I should have said, the b-shape is one of the principale shapes that re used to describe the position of the fingers https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Sign_language_handshapes @neauoire got it! going to take a bunch of practice, but i like how many other people are curious/learning one thing that has been a huge “hold up” moment for me is that using my left (dominant) hand doesn’t change the meaning; i still massively hesitate @neauoire While less technical, I think incorporating the etymology of a sign into its description would help. Most signs have an association with an action or object, which is the root of their meaning as a sign. For example, the ASL sign for "cat" is like demonstrating you have whiskers. Learning resources also tend to note the direction the palm faces. @neauoire Tactile sign language is often the preferred method of communication between deafblind people, but obviously this depends entirely on the individuals. This video is pretty outdated, but it has some interesting stuff on deafblind communication. I love the lady at 5:50, she's such a character. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usaf3bVVvjY @bee I'd like to do some more research before I have a sort of initial draft, but I'll ask you further down the line when I have a better idea of how I want to do this.  @neauoire I really struggle with descriptions like this. I mean: There's just so much assumed knowledge & context here that it's meaningless to me. @tty yeah that's super tricky. The textual description here is the actual textual description for the sign Thank You in ASL. @neauoire That description was pretty clear to me, but I've taken two ASL courses (taught by a Deaf person at my local CC) so I have some context to come from here. I think this is a place where jargon is useful? One population that may well benefit from these is DeafBlind folks - I believe many of them use a modified ASL that involves reading signs by touch instead of sight, so a description might be useful. @neauoire you could get inspiration from descriptions of hand mudras. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mudras_(yoga) @neauoire also, if you feel brave, scanning ethnographic literature for Balinese Legong hand gesture descriptions could be useful. though, it could also be incomprehensible.   |
Gregory's Server
I've looked at babysign and handspeak docs obviously, but being not a fluent sign communicator, these descriptions mean very little to me.
Example:
Articulation: Dominant horizontal "B-thumb" handshape, palm in, on the chest, circular movement (counterclockwise from the signer's perspective).
Can you picture the gesture when you read this?