There is news that shows us that advances in the technology sector not only serve to have a smartphone with a better screen or capable of playing more demanding games, but there are many people who can improve their quality of life thanks to them. The example that we tell you below is quite curious and what can be achieved, very important. A tablet sleeve capable of recognize, understand and translate sign language, a way to break through the barriers faced by the deaf community around the world on a daily basis.
Ryan Haiti Campbell deaf from birth and for some time, co-founder and CEO of MotionSavvy, a California-based startup, responsible for the development of UNI, a tablet sleeve that acts as an interpreter for the deaf.
Finding a job is not easy at the moment, but it becomes an almost impossible task if you also cannot hear and communicate normally in an interview. "You are not obliged to tell anyone that you are deaf until you get to the interview, but sometimes, they are a little surprised and do not know how to handle the situation," explains Campbell, who contributes a fact: the unemployment rate of people with this disability is 50% globally. He decided that this could not continue to be the case, and embarked on a joint journey with five more people that is slowly taking shape.
The other seed of all this is Alexandr opalka, that during your stay at the National Technical Institute, he worked on a similar technology that could help people who, like him, suffer from the impairments of this disability. Opalka, along with Campbell and four other deaf students, founded MotionSavvy in 2012.
MotionSavvy started as so many companies do today, with a crowdfunding campaign, in his case, on the platform IndieGoGo where they sought not only to raise the money necessary to continue with the project but also to gather beta-testers that could help build a dictionary of signs. 200 people were selected to receive the UNI tablet. A technology that could not even be imagined years ago but that is within reach in today's world thanks to Apple, Google or Microsoft.
At this point, UNI is still at an early stage. Despite this, he is able to understand even 300 signs, which are transformed into audio thanks to a recognition system developed by Leap Motion, and to text thanks to a speech converter. The system is still not very reliable, although they trust that the new version that will be released to beta-testers soon will be much improved.
They have managed to capture the attention of the very FCC that you have contacted them to check on UNI's progress. In addition, anyone who tries it is surprised by the results, and that there is a lot of work ahead and many things to polish before the launch, which is scheduled for 2015. Its price will be of U.S. dollar 800 plus a $ 20 monthly subscription to access the Builder Sign, which allows you to personalize recognition, teaching and saving new gestures. It may seem expensive, but it is not if we take into account the impact it can have and that the rest of the alternatives have totally prohibitive prices.
Source: Wired