Inclusive Society

For 10-14% of all children, language is difficult to learn and/or process due to cognitive disorders (ICAN 2006; Kerr & Franklin 2021), including DLD, ASD, and AD(H)D. Adequate, evidence-based intervention and support tools for these children are dearly needed. We contribute to the development of such tools in interdisciplinary (linguistics, psychology, computational science, AI) and intersectoral (teachers, practitioners, relatives/caregivers) research  projects.

Around 70 million people around the world are profoundly deaf and use sign language to communicate. Speech is inaccessible to them, and reading is often difficult as well. Therefore, translation of speech and text to sign language is essential to make important information and educational resources accessible to deaf citizens. Scientific and technological breakthroughs are needed to enable scalable text-to-sign translation. We leverage our expertise in sign linguistics, language technology, and virtual reality to forge such breakthroughs.