A new app for Google Glass makes communication a little easier between parents and their hearing-impaired children.
SMARTSign teaches ASL (American Sign Language) to Glass wearers. Kim Xu, a recent Human-Centered Computing Ph.D. graduate from the Georgia Institute of Technology, developed the app with one of her professors.
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The app pushes sign language quizzes to Glass in intervals throughout the day. The wearer sets when and how often he receives quizzes. During a quiz, the wearer sees a video of a sign, and he can select the correct answer from a bank of choices.
Xu says the app was designed for parents of deaf and hearing-impaired children, but the simple vocabulary is also a useful tool for parents to teach sign language to their children who can hear.
SMARTSign is also available for Android. In addition to quizzes, Android users can search for signs by text or voice input, and the app shows a video demonstrating how to sign the word. The app also includes also a record feature, which lets users view their signs compared to the example video.
Xu added that the Glass app will supplement the Android app and will give parents more practice time.
"You don't always have your phone as often as you think you do," she said. "If you're wearing Glass, it's all the time, so you can have more lessons throughout the day."
Right now, the Glass app only features the quiz portion of SMARTSign. Xu says she hopes the record-and-search functions will be added in the future.
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Image: YouTube, Thad Starner