More on apps that provide two-way interaction between deaf and hearing people

As mentioned in the previous post, Android apps from Transcense and MotionSavvy are poised to enable two-way communication between deaf and hearing people. I wrote to both companies to know more about their apps.

MotionSavvy

MotionSavvy UNI for Indian English would be available in 2017. For now, if you have friends in the US who might be interested, let them know.

Transcense

Thibault, a founder of Transcense, had news which was exciting: Transcense plans to offer Indian English for testing around March, 2015. They are keen in making the app affordable and fast enough.

Interestingly, Thibault worked at IIT-Kharagpur in 2013. While in India, he also created a video documentary interviewing 25 leaders and founders of social businesses. Thibault pointed me to Mirakle Couriers, whose entire staff is deaf - do go through their site.

If you are interested in participating in community testing of the Transcense app, please follow this blog and I'll share the details in March.

The video below is about the Transcense solution - it was also linked in the previous post.

How do such apps help

To get an idea of how things could improve with the help of new solutions, look at the number of deaf people in India - it is 6-15 million, according to DeafWay.org. If you include their families, the number of people who can directly benefit when deaf people's lives improve is mindboggling.

Finding teachers who know sign language  to teach deaf children must be a challenge - if speech-to-text technology for Indian English is available, hearing people who do not know sign language may be able to teach deaf children.

Speech to text would be more effective if deaf children are taught to read and write English well via sign language. Once that is done, the kind of technology we have seen will help with further learning. (The ultimate solution may be to translate English to sign language since that is their native language - this may take some more time though, and is not easy since sign language is supported by facial expression, body language and the fact that signs could vary in their speed, angle, completeness, range of movement etc.)

Education

Here are a few important points on the education of deaf children from DeafWay.org and other sites. I have extended their content based on my understanding:

• Children learn their first language by imitating and interacting with family and those around.
• Deaf children of deaf parents learn the sign language at home and are proficient in it when they join school (just like hearing children and their mother tongue). Only 10% of deaf children have deaf parents.
• Deaf children who have hearing parents i.e. the other 90% of deaf children, do not learn sign language at home.  When they join school, they know neither sign language nor a spoken language. They learn sign language mostly from other children at school who know it already.
• A child must know one language in order to learn a second language like English. This emphasises the importance of learning sign language early in childhood.
• Sign language is a visual language and has a different grammar from spoken languages.
• Indian Sign Language has the same grammar all over India, with a variation of around 8-12% in terms of vocabulary. So, people of one region can very well understand people from another region of India.
• It is somewhat more difficult for a deaf person to learn English for the following reasons:
• They do not have the aid of sound while learning it
• People do not speak English with the expressiveness present in sign language
• They cannot practise by speaking it.
• However, if deaf children learn English well at a young age, it opens up a whole new world for them, allowing them to learn anything they want.

Great, you stayed till the end. If I have got something wrong, please let me know.