Deafend: aplicativo para facilitação da comunicação com libras

Abstract

To increase the quality of life for the members of society, efficient communication between such individuals is, undoubtedly, necessary.With this in mind, the recent technological developments are quite positive, as they enable the exchange of data between people to become even faster, transforming the cell phone into one of the most important contemporary tools. However, while listeners - an absolute majority of the population - have obtained excellent new ways of contact, the deaf community still faces several barriers to express their ideas and assimilate new information. It is interesting to note that, despite the achievements attained throughout history, which served to soften the structural impacts on the lives of these individuals, the greatest difficulties of the deaf are caused by a common aspect that, usually, should be a reason for approximation: conversation. There is no legitimate connection mechanism between the significant portion of the population that has some type of auricular problem and the others, who are generally unfamiliar with sign language. Therefore, this work created, through natural language processing (NLP) techniques, an application with the aim of expands the communicability of the deaf and serves as an alternative for a dialogue based on parity between Portuguese and Libras (Brazilian Sign Language). In addition to the mobile application, which contains a user manual available online and features capable of collaborates so that its users (including illiterates) enjoy the benefits from a concrete social integration, this project produced an introductory tutorial to NLP, seeking to foster initial contact of enthusiasts with this area of artificial intelligence.