INTRODUCTION: Sign language is a form of communication and exchange of ideas by people who are hearing-impaired or unable to speak. Chinese fingerspelling is an important component of Chinese sign language, which is suitable for denoting terminology and using as the basis of gesture sign language learning. OBJECTIVES: We propose a nine-layer convolutional neural network (CNN) for the classification of Chinese sign language. METHODS: With self-learning and self-organization abilities, CNN is committed to processing data with similar network structure. CNN has a good application prospect in the aspect of image classification andplays a very important role in the classification of Chinese sign language. RESULTS: Through experiments on 1320 data samples of 30 categories, the results show that the classification accuracy based on the nine-layer convolutional neural network can reach up to 89.69± 2.10 %, it can be seen that this method can effectively classify Chinese gestures. CONCLUSION: We proposed a nine-layer convolutional neural network (CNN) that can classify Chinese sign language.
