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Th`Ese Alessandro MEI - Membre Du Jury Guido PROIETTI - Membre Du Jury THESE` En vue de l'obtention du DOCTORAT DE L'UNIVERSITE´ DE TOULOUSE D´elivr´epar l'Universit´eToulouse III - Paul Sabatier Discipline ou sp´ecialit´e: Informatique Pr´esent´eeet soutenue par Fabrizio BORGIA Le 30 Mars 2015 Titre: Informatisation d'une forme graphique des Langues des Signes: application au syst´emed'´ecritureSignWriting JURY Philippe JOLY - Pr´esident du jury Annelies BRAFFORT - Rapporteur de th`ese Alessandro MEI - Membre du jury Guido PROIETTI - Membre du jury Ecole doctorale: Math´ematiques,Informatique, T´el´ecommunications Unit´ede recherche: Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse Directeurs de Th`ese: Michel DAYDE, Maria DE MARSICO Rapporteurs: Alexey KARPOV, Annelies BRAFFORT \And they shall know no fear." The Emperor of Mankind Acknowledgments The road leading to the achievement of a Ph.D. can be quite harsh. The guidance of my supervisors, the help of colleagues and friends, and the sup- port of my family and my girlfriend made the present work possible, keeping me on my road. Each of them has helped to shape it, someone in a small way, someone in a decisive way. Therefore I would like to thank: My supervisor, Prof. Patrice Dalle (1948-2014), for welcoming me in Toulouse, for inspiring me and for his generous guidance during these past four years. Thank you, Patrice, for your invaluable teachings, and for a few words that I am never going to forget. My supervisor for the final part of my Ph.D., Prof. Michel Dayde, for his presence and for his precious help. My co-supervisor, Prof. Maria De Marsico, for everything. Thank you for many insightful discussions and suggestions, and for being my primary re- source for getting my questions answered, whenever even Google cannot. A much bigger thank you for believing me, for your patience, for your humor and for being there, always. The reviewers of the present work: Prof. Annelies Braffort, Prof. Alexey Karpov and Prof. Kent L. Norman for their insightful comments. The directors of the Ph.D. schools in Rome and in Toulouse: Prof. Alessan- dro Mei (\Sapienza" University of Rome) and Prof. Jean-Michel Roquejoffre (Universit´eToulouse III - Paul Sabatier). Elena Antinoro Pizzuto (1952-2011), for her contagious enthusiasm, for her activism towards the cause of the acknowledgement of Sign Language and for showing me the deep meaning of working with passion. Thank you for being the first person to believe in the possibility for me to become a Ph.D. and for actively working for it. Claudia S. Bianchini, my sister-in-arms, for the fun we had working together and traveling around for our conferences, for guiding me and for helping me 4 with any linguistic matter, and with a big lot of other things. Thank you for your friendship, for cheering me up whenever things got crazy, and above all for stopping that ferry in Istanbul! Valerie Sutton, the inventor of SignWriting, for \being the giant on whose shoulders I climbed", for her unwavering enthusiasm and for her limitless energy. It was my honor to meet you, Valerie. The research team of the ISTC-CNR at the State Institute for Deaf of Rome, for helping me to approach the Deaf Culture and for being my very first teachers in Sign Language. Thanks for all the insightful meetings and for your remarkable help during my studies and during the design and testing of most digital artifacts presented in this work. Arianna Testa, because, through her excellent job as a Sign Language inter- preter, she helped in producing a usability test for deaf users. All the graduating students who worked at the digital artifacts presented in this work: Lorenzo Trovarelli, Nigel Pllaha, Marco Rotiroti, Luca Franciosi, Davide Della Valle, Luca Fochetti and Riccardo Coccia. Thank you for our discussions, for sharing your thoughts and for your precious help. Martine Labruy`ereand Alessandra Sabatini, for their invaluable help against countless deadly administrative issues both in France and in Italy. The Bianchini-Marbot family: Marco L. Bianchini for the accurate reading of most of my papers, and for his precious advice on the academic world, and Ren´eMarbot for the hospitality and the company in the city of Paris. The Serco group, in particular Francesco Ferrante and Fabrizio Giordano for their trust, their advise and for putting up with the frequent schedule changes that may occur in the life of a worker which is finishing his Ph.D. My mother and my father, for my life as it is. Because I have so many things to be grateful for, that I have been looking at this sheet for two hours, without knowing where to start. I know they have been doing their best for me, every day, since that 25 June 1985, and despite they do not share all of my choices, they support me and they put up with no matter what. My sister Barbara, for the huge imaginary of stories, names and charac- ters that we share. Thank you for the happiness you bring, and the silence that you take away. 5 My grandparents: Maria, Ferdinando, Lucia and Nello, for the time we spent together, for the pride that I always read in their eyes, and because the thought of them is one of the things that drives me to never give up. Chiara, for being my North. For backing me up with love and empathy through all these years. For the adventures we share, for the sharpness of her thinking, and the kindness of her words. Because in my darkest moments she has never \winced nor cried aloud". My friends Jacopo and Marco, for being there, no matter what, and for the countless hours of gaming we have been sharing together since our early years. My friend Silvia, for making me laugh, and for being able to get me back with my feet on the ground when I'm wandering too far. 6 Abstract Abstract en Fran¸cais Les recherches et les logiciels pr´esent´esdans cette ´etudes'adressent `aune importante minorit´eau sein de notre soci´et´e,`asavoir la communaut´edes sourds. Selon l'Organisation Mondiale de la Sant´e,cette minorit´ecompte plus de 278 millions de personnes dans le monde. De nombreuses recherches d´emontrent que les sourds ont de grosses difficult´esavec la langue vocale (LV { Anglais, Chinois, etc.) ce qui explique que la plupart d'entre eux pr´ef`erent communiquer en Langue des Signes (LS). Du point de vue des sciences de l'information, les LS constituent un groupe de minorit´eslinguistiques peu repr´esent´eesdans l'univers du num´erique.Et, de fait, les sourds sont les su- jets les plus touch´espar la fracture num´erique. Cette ´etudeveut donc ^etreune contribution pour tenter de combler ce frac- ture num´eriquequi p´enaliseles sourds. Pour ce faire, nous nous sommes prin- cipalement concentr´essur l'informatisation de SignWriting, qui constitue l'un des syst`emesles plus prometteurs pour ´ecrirela LS. Concr`etement, Sign- Writing est un syst`emed'´ecriturequi utilise des symboles pour repr´esenter les configurations des mains, les mouvements et les mimiques du visage de la LS. Nos travaux visent donc `aprojeter et ´elaborer un syst`emepour d´evelopper la production et l'utilisation des ressources en LS ´ecritesavec SignWriting. Ce syst`emea ´et´ebaptis´e:SignWriting-oriented resources for the deaf (SWord). Le but final de SWord est de rendre SignWriting effectivement exploitable par les sourds aussi bien en tant que moyen de communication qu'en tant que support d'apprentissage notamment dans le domaine du num´erique.SWift, un ´editeurnum´eriquepermettant la cr´eationde ressources num´eriques en LS ´ecritesavec SignWriting, a ´et´ele premier logiciel `a^etreinclus dans SWord. Dans la pr´esente ´etude,nous souhaitons illustrer une s´eriede fonctions mises `ajour de SWift, comme par exemple la possibilit´ede composer des histoires enti`eresen LS. En outre, pour ´evaluer la fiabilit´eet la facilit´ed'utilisation de l'application, nous avons organis´eune session de tests sur un ´echantillon de ses principaux usagers, `asavoir des personnes qui connaissent et utilisent SignWriting. Etant donn´eque cet ´echantillon est compos´een majeure partie de sourds, nous avons adapt´el'approche des tests de fa¸con `ace qu'elle soit valable aussi bien pour les utilisateurs de la LS que ceux de la LV. Pour la r´ealisationdu test, nous avons adapt´eune m´ethode classique d'´evaluation de 8 la facilit´ed'utilisation, `asavoir le Think-Aloud Protocol (TAP) ainsi qu'un questionnaire de satisfaction tr`esr´epandu,`asavoir le Questionnaire for User Interaction Satisfacion (QUIS). En d´epitdes efforts accomplis, nous avons constat´eque les ´editeursnum´eriques pour SignWriting, comme par exemple SWift (et de nombreux autres) sont encore bien loin d’offrir `al'utilisateur une interface en mesure d'imiter la simplicit´ede l'´ecrituremanuscrite. C'est la raison pour laquelle nous avons approfondi nos recherches afin de projeter une nouvelle g´en´erationd'´editeur pour SignWriting, en mesure d'´epargner`al'utilisateur d'´eventuelles obliga- tions li´eesau click, au gliss´e-d´epos´e,`ala recherche et `ala navigation sur l'Interface Utilisateur (IU) pendant le processus de composition d'un signe. Notre objectif est de r´ealiserun mode d'interaction se rapprochant le plus possible de la m´ethode papier-stylo dont se servent habituellement les ^etres humains pour ´ecrire ou dessiner. Cet objectif repr´esente le noyau de notre ´etude.Pour pouvoir r´ealisercette nouvelle g´en´erationd'´editeur,nous avons con¸cuet ´elabor´eun logiciel pr´epos´e `ala conversion ´electroniqued'images scann´eescontenant des symboles manuscrits ou imprim´esen textes num´eriquesdans SignWriting.
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