So Google showed off a new feature on their Android keyboard where you can use ASL for dictation. On paper it seems very useful, but when I stopped to think about it it didn't make much sense to me.
Voice dictation has advantages over typing in that it's faster (albeit with less control over the exact transcribed text), and can be done with one hand or sometimes even hands free without looking at the screen. Meanwhile the new ASL dictation is still faster with less control, but seemingly requires three hands (one of them can be a mount) and to look at the screen while you use both hands for signing. In what situations would this be better than typing?
Can I get any thoughts on this from any deaf/mute people? Or even from hearing/voiced people who use voice dictation, as I almost never use that feature. It's entirely possible I missed something, but my current analysis is that it's yet another flashy yet ultimately useless feature.
@anonax ASL is a language of its own. It's not just "English but with your hands". A lot of Deaf/hard of hearing people consider ASL there native language, not English. So this is more of a translation service than a dictation service. Is it any good? I have no idea. Does it just restrict users to English fingerspelling? I don't know that, either. But there is a reason for this to exist, if it was done correctly and with the involvement of the Deaf community, and this turned out to be something they wanted. But based on Google's information about it we don't have enough to say either way.
@fastfinge I'm sure it has a reason to exist, I'm just not sure how used it will be. I don't doubt that Google can pull off a translation feature, as they seem to have some expertise there; I just think that finding a place to put your phone facing you, standing back to get your whole upper body in the camera, and signing at the phone is not something that people will do very frequently. I'm not sure what they could have done that was better, though; it seems like a hard problem.
@anonax It depends on how much they’d rather communicate via ASL. But most Deaf folks already communicate a lot via video calls, so odds are they already have a solution for this problem.
