Do predictability factors towards signing avatars hold across cultures?

TL;DR

This study investigates how intrinsic and extrinsic factors influence attitudes towards signing avatars across different cultures, highlighting variations among Deaf, hearing, and hard-of-hearing users and comparing results internationally.

Contribution

It provides cross-cultural insights into factors affecting avatar acceptance, emphasizing the importance of user characteristics and experience, with a focus on Deaf and sign language users.

Findings

Attitudes vary significantly across cultures and user groups.

Lower technology experience correlates with less favorable attitudes.

Intrinsic factors like avatar appearance influence acceptance.

Abstract

Avatar technology can offer accessibility possibilities and improve the Deaf-and-Hard of Hearing sign language users access to communication, education and services, such as the healthcare system. However, sign language users acceptance of signing avatars as well as their attitudes towards them vary and depend on many factors. Furthermore, research on avatar technology is mostly done by researchers who are not Deaf. The study examines the extent to which intrinsic or extrinsic factors contribute to predict the attitude towards avatars across cultures. Intrinsic factors include the characteristics of the avatar, such as appearance, movements and facial expressions. Extrinsic factors include users technology experience, their hearing status, age and their sign language fluency. This work attempts to answer questions such as, if lower attitude ratings are related to poor technology experience with ASL users, for example, is that also true for Moroccan Sign Language (MSL) users? For the purposes of the study, we designed a questionnaire to understand MSL users attitude towards avatars. Three groups of participants were surveyed: Deaf (57), Hearing (20) and Hard-of-Hearing (3). The results of our study were then compared with those reported in other relevant studies.