Below is a link to an interesting article from The New York Times about engineers at the University of Washington creating a technology able to transmit American Sign Language (ASL) via mobile devices. They are also running a study using this technology.

What is interesting is that MobileASL should work on any phone with a video camera, unlike current technology which can only be used on 3G phones. Additionally, MobileASL will take up  less bandwidth.  Does anyone know of anything similar technologies or similar studies? Or is anyone out there participating in this study and want to share their experiences? For more please click here.

Engineers at the University of Washington are developing the first mobile technology able to transmit American Sign Language (ASL) over cellular networks. The software called MobileASL currently runs on phones imported from Europe while being tested, but it could be configured to run on any device in the near future.

If you’re wondering how the engineers are claiming “first” when video conferencing solutions, most notably Apple’s FaceTime and mobile video applications like Fring, already provide face-to-face communications ideal for signing, the difference is in the technology behind mobileASL itself.