  Advances in NLP, knowledge representation and computer graphic technologies
can provide us insights into the development of educational tool for Deaf
people. Actual education materials and tools for deaf pupils present several
problems, since textbooks are designed to support normal students in the
classroom and most of them are not suitable for people with hearing
disabilities. Virtual Reality (VR) technologies appear to be a good tool and a
promising framework in the education of pupils with hearing disabilities. In
this paper, we present a current research tasks surrounding the design and
implementation of a virtual 3D educational environment based on X3D and H-Anim
standards. The system generates and animates automatically Sign language
sentence from a semantic representation that encode the whole meaning of the
Arabic input text. Some aspects and issues in Sign language generation will be
discussed, including the model of Sign representation that facilitate reuse and
reduces the time of Sign generation, conversion of semantic components to sign
features representation with regard to Sign language linguistics
characteristics and how to generate realistic smooth gestural sequences using
X3D content to performs transition between signs for natural-looking of
animated avatar. Sign language sentences were evaluated by Algerian native Deaf
people. The goal of the project is the development of a machine translation
system from Arabic to Algerian Sign Language that can be used as educational
tool for Deaf children in algerian primary schools.
