WSLP 2026
2nd Workshop on Sign Language Processing (WSLP-2026)
Co-located with EMNLP 2026 in Budapest, Hungary on October 24 –29, 2026
Across the world, more than 430 million people experience disabling hearing loss. For many in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) community, sign languages are the primary means of communication. These languages are not simply visual equivalents of spoken languages—they are fully developed linguistic systems with their own grammar, structure, and cultural significance. However, accessibility barriers remain widespread due to a shortage of qualified sign language interpreters and limited technological support.
Sign language translation, which involves converting rich visual-gestural input into spoken or written language, presents unique challenges. Unlike spoken languages, sign languages are inherently multi-modal, involving hand gestures, facial expressions, and body posture. These features make the translation task complex, especially in the absence of large annotated datasets and standardized benchmarks.
The Workshop on Sign Language Processing ( WSLP ) aims to address this disparity. The goal of this workshop is to explore innovative approaches and methodologies for translating sign languages, with a particular focus on low-resource settings. We invite researchers and practitioners working on diverse sign languages to come together, share their work, discuss challenges, and foster collaborations that can drive progress in this critical field.
📣 News
- June 8th 2026: Information about the WSLP 2026 Shared Task is now available! Join our Discord server to stay updated and share your ideas with other participants.
- June 8th 2026: Important dates for submissions are released!
- October 2nd 2026: The list of accepted papers for WSLP 2026 is now available!
Accepted Papers
Workshop Main Papers
1. ISLiM: A Compact End-to-End Sign Language Translation Framework
Authors: Shoaib Ahmed, Dipti Mishra Presentation Mode: Oral and Poster
2. What Actually Transfers? Diagnosing Output-Projection Initialization in Low-Resource Sign Language Translation
Authors: Kai-Yang Peng, Chunki Lim, Shu-Kai Hsieh Presentation Mode: Oral and Poster
3. LSC-CARE: An Annotated Dataset for Medical Catalan Sign Language
Authors: Carlos Escolano, Joan Gomà Cortés, Gemma Barberà, Gerard Sant, Maite Melero Presentation Mode: Oral and Poster
4. Isolated Sign Language Recognition for Icelandic Sign Language: Experiments in a Low-Resource Setting
Authors: Finnur Ágúst Ingimundarson, Guðný Björk Þorvaldsdóttir, Mathias Müller, Sarah Ebling Presentation Mode: Poster
5. Using Sign Phonology to Improve Few-Shot Cross-Lingual Transfer Learning for Sign Language Recognition
Authors: Matteo Lanza Presentation Mode: Oral and Poster
6. Recognizing Uruguayan Sign Language Glosses in Continuous Discourse: A Curated Dataset and First Baselines
Authors: Manu Bervejillo, Facundo Techera, Emilio Valle-Lisboa, Ariel E. Stassi, Luis Chiruzzo Presentation Mode: Oral and Poster
7. Coverage Is Not Enough: A Controlled Study of Annotation Selection for Low-Resource Sign Language
Authors: Gyanendra Shrestha, Liting Zhang Presentation Mode: Oral and Poster
8. Bukva: Russian Sign Language Alphabet
Authors: Petr Surovtsev, Alexander Nagaev, Karina Kvanchiani, Elizaveta Petrova, Alexander Kapitanov Presentation Mode: Poster
9. Cross-Lingual Transfer of Self-Supervised Representations for Sign Language Translation: A Case Study for Turkish Sign Language
Authors: Özge Can Özel, Saliha Nur Şahin, Murat Saraçlar Presentation Mode: Oral and Poster
10. SpaMo-BdSL: Gloss-Free Bangla Sign Language Translation Using Spatial Configurations and Motion Dynamics with LLMs
Authors: Kowshik Saha, Adibah Mahmud, M Saifur Rahman Presentation Mode: Oral and Poster
11. Zero-Shot Cross-Lingual Recognition of Sign Language Handshapes
Authors: Marcel Granero-Moya, Carolina del Corral Farrarós, Gloria Haro, Coloma Ballester, Ricardo Marques Presentation Mode: Poster
12. HandReader: Advanced Techniques for Efficient Fingerspelling Recognition
Authors: Pavel Korotaev, Petr Surovtsev, Alexander Kapitanov, Karina Kvanchiani, Alexander Nagaev Presentation Mode: Poster
13. Znaki: A Russian Fingerspelling Recognition Dataset
Authors: Petr Surovtsev, Pavel Korotaev, Alexander Nagaev, Alexander Kapitanov Presentation Mode: Poster
14. TransAlign-SLT: Complementary Temporal and Semantic Supervision for Gloss-Free Sign Language Translation
Authors: Pallapu Mohan Krishna, Uppala Sanjay Kumar, M. K. Bhuyan, Debanga Raj Neog Presentation Mode: Poster
15. Articulator-Level Cross-Lingual Transfer in Sign Language Translation
Authors: Ali Elaswad, Omar Mokhtar Gaber Saqr Presentation Mode: Poster
16. Testing Video MLLM Sensitivity to Hand-Localized Visual Detail in Chinese Sign Recognition: A Matched Visual Intervention Study
Authors: Bowen Ye, Dengfeng Yao, Siyuan Jing, Peng Jin, Hongzhe Liu, Cheng Xu Presentation Mode: Oral and Poster
Shared Task Papers
1. Whitening and Fine-Tuning Are Substitutes: One-Shot Indian Sign Language Recognition
Authors: Galiveeti Poornima, Sandeep Mathias Presentation Mode: Poster
2. Metric-Learning Retrieval for Cross-Signer Isolated Sign Language Recognition
Authors: Md. Asif Ali, Md. Mosharaf Hossain Apurbo, Kazi Reyazul Hasan Presentation Mode: Poster
3. Multiple-Instance Contrastive Alignment for Pose-Based Sign Spotting
Authors: Md. Mosharaf Hossain Apurbo, Md. Asif Ali, Kazi Reyazul Hasan Presentation Mode: Poster
4. Shared-Encoder Contrastive Grounding for Pose-Based Indian Sign Language Translation
Authors: Gyanendra Shrestha, Liting Zhang Presentation Mode: Poster
5. CARE: A Coverage-Aware Retrieval Ensemble for Isolated Sign Language Recognition
Authors: Tu Nam Nguyen, Hiroki Takahashi Presentation Mode: Poster
6. SignaFusion@WSLP 2026: Gated Vision—Language Adjudication and Multi-Expert Fusion for Isolated Sign Language Recognition
Authors: Bolisetty Samanvitha, Ojas Srivastava, Pruthwik Mishra, Praveen Kumar Chandaliya Presentation Mode: Poster
🗓️ Important Dates
📝 Workshop Papers
- First Call for Papers: June 8th, 2026
- Second Call for Papers: June 15th, 2026
- Third Call for Papers: July 15th, 2026
- Paper Submission Deadline:
August 20th, 2026August 24th, 2026 - Notification of Acceptance:
September 4th, 2026September 10th, 2026 - Camera-Ready Papers Due:
September 10th, 2026September 15th, 2026 - Processing Due: September 25th, 2026
- 📅 Workshop Date: October 29th, 2026
🧪 Shared Task Key Dates
- Start Date: June 8th, 2026
- Training Phase: June 8th – July 31st, 2026
- Testing Phase: August 1st – August 10th, 2026
- Paper Submission Deadline:
August 20th, 2026August 24th, 2026 - Notification of Acceptance:
September 4th, 2026September 10th, 2026 - Camera-Ready Papers Due:
September 10th, 2026September 15th, 2026 - Proceedings Due: September 25th, 2026
All deadlines are 11:59 PM UTC-12:00 (“Anywhere on Earth”).
Note: The workshop will be held in a hybrid format, allowing both in-person and virtual participation. Accepted papers will be presented as posters or oral presentations, as determined by the program committee.
Program
08:50 – 09:10
Opening and Welcome
09:10 – 09:45
Invited Talk 1 (30 min talk + 5 min Q&A) Title: Sign Language Recognition in the Wild: Insights from Smartphone-Captured Datasets Speaker: Prof. Hamzah Luqman
09:45 – 10:45
Invited Talk 2 (45 min talk + 15 min Q&A) Title: What Should Sign Language AI Recognize? Communication Beyond Shared Sign Languages Speaker: Prof. Mayumi Bono
10:45 – 11:00
Coffee Break
11:00 – 12:00
Paper presentations (10 min talk + 2 min Q&A)
11:00–11:12: ISLiM: A Compact End-to-End Sign Language Translation Framework
11:12–11:24: What Actually Transfers? Diagnosing Output-Projection Initialization in Low-Resource Sign Language Translation
11:24–11:36: Coverage Is Not Enough: A Controlled Study of Annotation Selection for Low-Resource Sign Language
11:36–11:48: LSC-CARE: An Annotated Dataset for Medical Catalan Sign Language
11:48–12:00: Recognizing Uruguayan Sign Language Glosses in Continuous Discourse: A Curated Dataset and First Baselines
12:00 – 13:00
Poster Presentations 20 Posters
13:00 – 14:00
Lunch Break
14:00 – 15:00
Invited Talk 3 (45 min talk + 15 min Q&A) Title: Beyond the Gloss: Linguistic Challenges in Sign Language Data Collection and Annotation Speaker: Prof. Maram Salman Aljuaid
15:00 – 15:48
Paper presentations (10 min talk + 2 min Q&A)
15:00–15:12: Using Sign Phonology to Improve Few-Shot Cross-Lingual Transfer Learning for Sign Language Recognition
15:12–15:24: Cross-Lingual Transfer of Self-Supervised Representations for Sign Language Translation: A Case Study for Turkish Sign Language
15:24–15:36: SpaMo-BdSL: Gloss-Free Bangla Sign Language Translation Using Spatial Configurations and Motion Dynamics with LLMs
15:36–15:48: Testing Video MLLM Sensitivity to Hand-Localized Visual Detail in Chinese Sign Recognition: A Matched Visual Intervention Study
15:48 – 16:00
Coffee Break
16:00 – 17:00
Invited Talk 4 (Online) (45 min talk + 15 min Q&A) Title: A few steps toward understanding sign language in the real world Speaker: Prof. Karen Livescu
17:00 – 17:10
Closing Remarks
FAQ
Can't find your answer? Send an email and we will get back to you.
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Yes, dual submissions are allowed if the other venue also allows dual submissions. If your submission is accepted to the archival track of WSLP, you will have to withdraw your submission to the other venue. Dual submissions to WSLP and EMNLP (including ARR) are not allowed.
Invited Speakers
Hamzah Luqman
Associate Professor at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals and Director of Arabic Sign Language Processing and Generation Lab
Mayumi Bono
Associate Professor, National Institute of Informatics (NII), Japan Photo: From NII Today No. 107.
Maram Salman Aljuaid
Lecturer and PhD Researcher in Linguistics, King Faisal University, Saudi Arabia
Karen Livescu
Professor, TTI-Chicago
Organizers
You can reach the organizers by e-mail to isign.benchmark@gmail.com.
Ashutosh Modi
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur), India
Mohammed Hasanuzzaman
ADAPT Centre, MTU, Ireland
Marek Hrúz
University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic
Facundo Manuel Quiroga
Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), Argentina
Sabyasachi Kamila
Manipal Institute of Technology Bengaluru, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India
Abhinav Joshi
Ph.D. Student, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur), India
Sanjeet Singh
Ph.D. Student, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur), India
Keren Artiaga
ADAPT Centre, MTU, Cork, Ireland
Pokala Dattatreya
Masters Student, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur), India
Khushi Jaydeep Pujara
Masters Student, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur), India
Ivan Gruber
Senior Researcher, University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic
Tomáš Železný
University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic
Jakub Honzík
University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic