Abstract
The multilingualism found in many countries, as well as within professional groups, complicates verbal communication, as both communicating parties are required to know all the languages used. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that languages are often mixed during communication. Avatars can be used to communicate with deaf people by simulating the behavior of sign language users. This paper presents a digital sign language avatar built on a language-agnostic, multimodal animation pipeline that decouples linguistic input from animation, combining skeletal body and hand motion with facial blendshape animation as independent modalities. It also presents a methodology for assessing its quality with the participation of experts (i.e., professional sign language interpreters) and the corresponding research results. The average quality rating of the avatar interface by the experts was 5.5 on a 7-point Likert scale, indicating its potential for practical use. At the same time, the research identified opportunities to improve the naturalness of movement and the consistency of gesture transitions.