Sign-Speak Blog

Expanding Accessibility Beyond Captions With Avatars

Author: Sign-Speak Team — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 14:00:00 GMT

Today we're excited to introduce Avatars, a brand-new feature now available inside SignCaption.

Sign-Speak Wins Forbes 200 Award

Author: Sign-Speak Team — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 20:07:50 GMT

We’re thrilled to share that Sign-Speak has been recognized on the Forbes Accessibility 200 list as one of the world’s leading innovators and impact-makers in accessibility.

Key Takeaways from the Symposium on AI and Sign Language Interpreting

development@sign-speak.com (Development) — Thu, 02 May 2024 13:45:00 GMT

Attending the Symposium on AI and Sign Language Interpreting last weekend felt like entering a buzzing digital space, where countless ideas and innovations surrounding Deaf and Hard of Hearing accessibility technology were discussed. Therefore, with all the excitement in the world, we delved into the world of sign language AI interpretation for two days!

Deaf Representation and Accessibility in the Media

development@sign-speak.com (Development) — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 16:15:00 GMT

If asked to provide the names of their favorite movie stars or media personalities, most people could probably rattle off at least a handful of names without having to think about it. But what if those same people were asked to name their favorite Deaf actor or celebrity? Odds are, you might get a puzzled look, maybe a sheepish smile.

Mainstream media has a serious problem when it comes to Deaf inclusion. In spite of the fact that around 1 in 8 people (or 13% of the population) in the United States are either Deaf or experience hearing loss in both ears, the coverage allotted to Deaf performers or entertainers in the media is woefully inadequate. In recent years, a few individuals from the Deaf community have made strides toward increasing Deaf representation in show business—notably, actresses Lauren Ridloff, Marlee Matlin, and Alaqua Cox, and producers Natasha Ofili, Storm Smith, and Jade Bryan. However, in spite of these and other small victories—such as the 2021 film CODA winning three Oscars for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Screenplay—the media has a long way to go before it can claim anything close to accurate or proportionate representation of either Deaf producers or characters.

Representation: Why It Matters

Deaf representation in the media isn't just a matter of political correctness. As the National Association of the Deaf notes, "Media representation has tremendous power in shaping society's perception of any community, including the deaf and hard of hearing community….Historically, the media has misrepresented deaf people as more isolated, disabled, or dependent than the rest of the population." In excluding Deaf performers and characters from films and television, we're also erasing and alienating the real-world Deaf community, a phenomenon known as "othering."

The thing that's important to understand about othering is that when it happens, everyone loses. Deaf individuals may feel isolated, or might experience emotional pain at seeing a hearing actor be cast as a Deaf character. Lack of representation also perpetuates the relative lack of understanding surrounding the Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities, which in turn allows offensive stereotypes and outdated information to persist. For Deaf or Hard of Hearing children, seeing Deaf actors represented in the media can help to normalize their experience.

Representation Includes Accessibility

The issue of Deaf inclusion operates on multiple levels. As discussed above, ensuring that Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals are fairly portrayed in the media is essential to cultivating a more equitable society. However, another crucial component of this shift is ensuring that Deaf and Hard of Hearing consumers have access to mainstream media through services like captioning and audio descriptions.

As with representation, progress in accessibility can often feel like a two-steps-forward, one-step-back sort of process. While it's true that captioning is much more available and widespread than it used to be, it's far from universally available. Some shows or movies only add captions after the initial premiere of the program, which forces Deaf or Hard of Hearing individuals to wait until a later time to be able to watch it. If live captions are available, they're sometimes inaccurate or poorly paced. Limitations such as these make it difficult for Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals to engage with media to the same degree that hearing people are able to.

Super Bowl LVI: A Case Study

Many people from the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community were thrilled to learn that the 2022 Super Bowl halftime performance (which featured well-known performers such as Mary J. Blige, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, and 50 Cent) would also include Deaf ASL performers Waren "Wawa" Snipe and Sean Forbes.

This promise, however, turned out to be somewhat hollow. Although Wawa and Sean did indeed perform during the halftime show, their performance, rather than being broadcast on live TV, was streamed separately on the NBCSports App and NBC Sports.com. As a result, Deaf and Hard of Hearing viewers were forced to watch the ASL performance on separate devices. There followed an Internet backlash from the Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities, who were frustrated by their marginalized experience and the lack of follow-through in making sure that the show was accessible to all viewers.

Unfortunately, the example of Super Bowl LVI isn't unique; although ASL interpretation has been increasingly included in the Super Bowl since 1992, ASL interpreters are rarely, if ever, featured prominently. Like others before it, this year's Super Bowl serves as a pointed reminder of the necessity of both representation and accessibility in order to create an inclusive, equitable world for Deaf and Hard of Hearing people.

The mission of Sign-Speak is to partner with Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities in creating tools that will enhance interaction between Deaf and Hard of Hearing and hearing individuals. Our innovative machine learning software is able to recognize sign language and translate it into the spoken word, thereby improving accessibility for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community in the workplace and beyond. For employers, Sign-Speak's assistive technology allows them to uphold the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and show their commitment to equity. If you or someone you know could benefit from using Sign-Speak, don't hesitate to contact us today!

How We Can Make the Online World More Accessible for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People

development@sign-speak.com (Development) — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 17:45:00 GMT

It's happened to most people at least once: you open a new web page in a public space, and suddenly, thanks to an embedded video set to auto-play, sound is blaring from your computer.

Depending on where you are, the above scenario might be a little embarrassing, but overall, probably not that big of a deal—you'd simply stop the video, perhaps make an awkward apology, and go on with your day.

But what if you were Deaf or Hard of Hearing, and didn't realize that the video had started to play?

Or, worse, what if you were invited to an important work meeting held over Zoom where captions weren't provided, or were terribly inaccurate?

The above are just a couple of examples of how the online world can feel like a minefield for people who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing. While we might assume that the amount of visual and written content on the Internet would make it a friendly space for Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals, that's often not the case, particularly considering the soaring popularity of hearing-centric media such as podcasts, or social media sites like TikTok.

Creating an inclusive online digital environment is very possible—however, it does require that we put some thought into how to make a website accessible for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Below are a few easy-to-implement strategies that can make a world of difference when it comes to Deaf accessibility:

Subtitles or Closed Captioning for Videos

Implementing subtitles or closed captions for video content and videoconferencing software is one of the most obvious steps we can take to use technology for Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals. This is even more true given the widespread use of video-sharing platforms and social media sites like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.

It's also important to ensure that subtitles and closed captioning services are accurate and easy to find, that the words appear on the screen in a way that is easy for Deaf and Hard of Hearing people to read, and that they don't obscure the actual video or picture being shown. Aside from just transcribing dialogue, subtitles and closed captions should also include descriptions of non-spoken sounds (such as applause, thunder, etc.).

Transcripts for Audio-Only Content

One report estimated that as of April 2021, the cumulative number of existing podcasts surpassed 2 million shows, which contained a total of around 48 million podcast episodes. Those numbers represent countless hours of media and content that are inaccessible to Deaf and Hard of Hearing people without the help of a transcription service. According to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, any audio-only form of media should have an alternative that allows both readers and listeners to access the same information.

As with subtitles and closed captions, however, it's essential that transcripts be accurate in order for them to be effective. Often, using automatic transcription softwares can result in errors that are confusing and frustrating for consumers. To ensure fewer errors and more reliable transcripts, it's preferable for content creators to publish their scripts as a transcript.

Structured Content

Because Deaf and Hard of Hearing people are more likely to connect visually with online content, it's all the more important that the content they see is well-organized and easy to navigate. Being able to quickly skim an article or web page and discern whether or not it's worth spending more time on can be hugely helpful for people whose primary way of interacting with the world is through visual means.

Aside from the layout of a website, another important aspect of Deaf accessibility is the diction and style of your written content. For some people in the Deaf community, sign language is their first language, and their comfort level with written language may vary. Using concise, clear language can create a better experience for people in this situation.

Include Multiple Contact Methods

A "Contact" page that details how customers can connect with an organization is an essential component of any business website. However, contact information that is limited to a phone number can be a serious obstacle for Deaf or Hard of Hearing people. By including multiple different contact methods (such as email, web forms, or chat functions), businesses and organizations can ensure that they are providing avenues for Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals to reach out.

The mission of Sign-Speak is to partner with Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities in creating tools that will enhance interaction between Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and hearing individuals. Our innovative machine learning software is able to recognize sign language and translate it into the spoken word, thereby improving accessibility for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community in the workplace and beyond. For employers, Sign-Speak's assistive technology allows them to uphold the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and show their commitment to equity. If you or someone you know could benefit from using Sign-Speak, don't hesitate to contact us today!

How Technology Can Help Advance Accessibility for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People

development@sign-speak.com (Development) — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 16:45:00 GMT

According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, around 13% of people age 12 or older in the United States have hearing loss in both ears. That's one in eight people who may experience added difficulty navigating the world on a daily basis due to being deaf or hard of hearing. For people who are affected by hearing loss, even simple activities like riding the bus, going grocery shopping, or trying to schedule an appointment can be arduous.

For people who experience accessibility barriers like these due to being deaf or hard of hearing, technology can be an important lifeline that enables them to connect more easily and fully with hearing individuals.

What Is Assistive Technology?

The Assistive Technology Industry Association defines assistive technology as "any item, piece of equipment, software program, or product system that is used to increase, maintain or improve the functional capabilities of persons with disabilities." Assistive technology comes in a variety of forms: it can be high-tech or low-tech, digital or physical, or somewhere in between. It can be used in any area of a person's life, from personal to professional or elsewhere.

Who Uses Assistive Technology?

Deaf and hard of hearing individuals aren't the only ones who benefit from assistive technology. People who live with any sort of disability (such as blindness, speech disorders, or physical disabilities) may also use assistive technology.

Examples of Assistive Technology for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People

Assistive technologies can perform a variety of different functions. Some technologies enhance listening for people who are hard of hearing, whereas other technologies translate sound to visual information for people who are deaf. Still others enable deaf or hard of hearing individuals to communicate more easily with hearing individuals who don't know sign language.

Advancements in technology have led to an increase in the number and types of Deaf communication technology; listed below are a few examples:

Hearing aids enhance hearing by increasing the volume or modifying the frequency of sounds for the wearer.
Some Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals may choose cochlear implants to enhance their hearing. Cochlear implants are a form of assistive technology which involve surgically implanted devices that allow the wearer to hear by stimulating the auditory nerve with electrical signals.
Alerting systems notify the user of something by means of lights, vibrations, or some other visual/physical stimulus. Alerting systems can be incorporated in alarm systems like doorbells, smoke alarms, phone calls, and more.
Captioning technologies allow individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing to read a transcript of a phone call or video. Some captioning technologies are advanced enough to allow for real-time transcription of audio from a phone conversation or videochat. When it comes to captioning, accuracy is important. Inaccurate captions can create headaches for the person trying to read them.
Video and text relay services allow hearing and non-hearing persons to communicate with one another by means of an interpreter or speech-to-text/text-to-speech software.

The list above represents just a few of the assistive technologies specifically designed to help deaf or hard of hearing people. However, it's important to note that other widely available, non-specific forms of technology can be instrumental in helping Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals. For example, most smartphones come equipped with a "Notes" feature that allows deaf or hard of hearing individuals to type out messages to show to people. Text messaging and instant messaging also make it much easier for these individuals to communicate with one another and with people who don't speak sign language.

Why Assistive Technology Matters

Lack of accessibility for hard of hearing and deaf people effectively means that these individuals are prevented from being able to fully participate in society. In turn, this impedes their ability to work, socialize, and have their basic needs met. This isn't just a matter of convenience or preference—for people in this position, not having access to assistive technology (or a lack of integration of that technology into society) is an inequity that directly impacts their quality of life. Additionally, the exclusion of deaf and hard of hearing people means that the rest of society is then deprived of the contributions those individuals might have made.

Sign-Speak has arrived in Boston, as a Techstars Company!

development@sign-speak.com (Development) — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 14:30:00 GMT

We made our move from Rochester, NY earlier this month. All of us at Sign-Speak are excited about the move, and are looking forward to the chance to communicate with local Deaf and Hard of Hearing (D/HH) communities and businesses. As a reminder, Sign-Speak is a real time sign language recognition technology that allows for translation between sign language and english, and vice versa. This is why Nikolas (Niko) Kelly, in particular, is eager to connect with local leaders and influencers as he is interested in getting to know Boston’s D/HH community’s particular concerns, and how Sign-Speak can best help enable authentic communication for Signers and their families.

None of this would have been possible without the support of Techstars Boston and their amazing team Greg Raiz, Jennifer Davis and Simone LaPray. Sign-Speak is one of twelve startups chosen by Techstars Boston as part of their mission to support businesses that will “change the way we live and work.” Sign-Speak’s leadership and mission embodies the very values that Techstars seeks to promote, such as our desire to change the way the world communicates with some of its most overlooked populations. Techstars' continued devotion to diversity, both among the companies it accelerates and in the leadership of those companies, means a great deal to us. Sign-Speak is Deaf, Black, Latinx, Women, and LBGTQ+ owned and operated, and we were fortunate that Techstars chose Sign-Speak to be the first company they accelerated with a Deaf founder. We couldn’t have been happier to accept their support.

Moving forward, we will bring our very best A-game to Boston, and are in the process of reaching out to universities, hospitals, small businesses, and community centers that serve the D/HH community. For the foreseeable future, we want to ensure that the D/HH community in Boston is better served with a technology that enables their most authentic communication methods. We are continually improving our technology to best serve the needs of the D/HH community, and Sign-Speak believes that there is no better place for us right now to carry our mission forward than Boston. You are the reason why we can continue to advance communication.

Sign-Speak knows that its technology is only worthwhile if it can serve the D/HH community. It is with that in mind that we want to reach out to everyone in the greater Boston area to reach out to us if you find our technology at all useful to you or the communities you serve. Schools, Hospitals, Libraries, Community Centers, Restaurants, Hotels, and so much more are the bedrock of our communities. We believe that everyone should have equal access to those institutions. If you are a member of the D/HH community, and you would like to use our technology when going to the store, then we are here to help! Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us for any reason. You, and people like you, are the reason Sign-Speak exists.

Developing MVP without a Technical Team: Part 1

development@sign-speak.com (Development) — Sat, 07 Aug 2021 15:45:00 GMT

By: Nicholas Wilkins, Sign-Speak CTO

Here at Sign-Speak, we are tremendously lucky to have a diverse founding team which mixes both business and technical skill sets, and respects each others’ strong suits. This has enabled us to move extremely fast, such as when we iterated our product 14 times over three weeks. However, as the Chief Technical Officer at Sign-Speak, I often have founders asking me “how do I find a technical cofounder” or “what should I do if I cannot find a technical cofounder”. To help answer those questions, I decided to write down some of my thoughts for those that might find this information helpful.

For some high-tech and technically risky startups, finding a CTO is a necessity. For example, we’re training language models on a low resource language with a novel modality, so naturally, we require strong technical skills to pioneer new machine learning techniques. That is not true for everyone. For many startups, you can reasonably get by your beginning stages without a technical cofounder.

It is important to note that the goal of this post series is not to say that you shouldn’t find a technical team or a solid technical cofounder. Rather, I intend to demonstrate what some alternatives are if you cannot find solid technical talent pre-minimum viable product (MVP). Regardless, it’s important to stress that if you decide to take on technical development yourself, you need to establish realistic expectations and initially develop MVP. In order to do so, we must first establish the type of risk your product will encounter.

One large impacting factor on your technical journey is Risk. Specifically Product Risk and Technical Risk.

Product Risk refers to the chance that a market will reject your product. For example, your customers hate the product and leave a bad review, or you can’t find people willing to pay your asking price. Technical Risk, on the other hand, refers to the risk that you cannot develop the product or feature you’re envisioning.

Generally, technical risk is hard to quantify for non-technical folks, but there are good proxies you can use to estimate technical risk. One such proxy is Technical Novelty. A good way of identifying Technical Novelty is if something similar to your minimum viable idea has been done before or is currently in the market.

Note that technical novelty is different from novelty as a whole; an idea may be novel, but only requires established technical methods and platforms. For example, let's take a hypothetical company called LinkedIn for Medical which helps patients find doctors and chat with them before consultation to get a feel for their personality. While this idea may be novel and revolutionary, it is not technically novel as it only requires repurposing social networking type tools.

An MVP which has high technical novelty or high risk is likely to be more challenging to pull off without a technical team than one with low technical risk. Please evaluate where you stand on the scale of technical novelty and risk. Stay tuned as next week we return to talk about alternatives for co-founders ready to build their MVP without a CTO.

Developing MVP without a Technical Team: Part 2

development@sign-speak.com (Development) — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 12:45:00 GMT

On my last blog I discussed the different types of risks you encounter when creating your product. We reflect on these risks to help you decide if you absolutely need to find a technical co-founder/team or if you could opt for other alternatives. If you have carefully thought about the risk your product has and have concluded that you want to explore alternative technical routes this blog is for you. The blog will tell you what alternatives there are and what to consider when deciding which one to go for.

One thing we often see startup founders do is offshore or outsource development. Our team tends to, however, discourage this for several reasons. You may get lucky outsourcing your development with a fantastic team, but most likely you won’t know the quality until it’s too late. Worse yet, it’s difficult to tell things like code quality if you are not technical yourself (this can easily lead to others trying to pull wool over your eyes).

As an engineer on staff, I’m incentivised to write maintainable code because if I do not, it’ll eventually come back to bite me months or years in the future (because I’m the one to maintain it). However, at consultancy and outsourcing agencies, I’ve often seen them hand off projects with huge tech debt and spaghetti code that basically needs to be rewritten from scratch to make any change. After a contracted project is finished, it no longer directly impacts those engineers anymore.

Within startups, this often manifests itself as contractors spending three months, then giving a product to you and leaving. Unfortunately, this makes product iteration hard or borderline impossible; if your specification to the offshore team is not exactly what the market wants, or they don’t follow your specification to a T, you won’t end up with a usable product. If iterating our product countless times taught us anything, it’s that founders are almost always wrong (at least initially) at what their MVP is, and if working in the industry for years taught me anything, it’s that people are horrible at software specifications and knowing (and saying) what they want.

What to do instead

No Code movement

There has been an increase in the “low-code/no-code” movement with a plethora of tools sprouting up everywhere. Specifically these tools seek to empower non technical folks to build their ideas themself. These tools tend to be graphical in nature and allow you to drag and drop functionality into your app, then export it as a fully baked app.

It is important to make sure of two things before deciding to work with a tool. First, look into the company who developed it; do they look like they will go out of business any time soon? What is the quality of their website and tool? What other products have been built through this tool? Next, make sure that the functionality which you need for your MVP is actually supported in this no code tool. If you need a map feature and no such “widget” exists, or you need a social network and no backend exists, maybe don’t go with that tool. It is important to make sure of these two things to prevent vendor lock-in to a bad platform.

If you can find a no code tool which seems capable of building your app, you’ll probably be able to build it and test it within a matter of days, so have fun iterating!

Graphical Mockups

If you can’t find a no-code environment but want to get started iterating, try making a graphical mockup in Figma or a similar product. You can add basic functionality to the wireframe (e.g. clicking) that will allow you to gather feedback and iterate. You can use this to try to hone in on what you want your product to look like. After you’ve iterated and come to something you think works, get some letters of intent or a waiting list, raise on that, and hire the technical team to build it.

Learn it!

Finally, don’t be afraid to delve in and learn some code! I promise it’s not as hard as it seems once you get started. Go through a curriculum such as those on CodeAcademy to learn basic programming concepts. Then apply your knowledge on some low coding platforms such as Microsoft PowerApps.

If you have any questions on this, need some guidance on how to get started coding, want to chat machine learning stuff, or just want to chat, feel free to reach out to me at nicholas@sign-speak.com.

Investing in the Communication Revolution

mcl7659@g.rit.edu (Maggie Long) — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 23:45:00 GMT

Earlier we informed you about Conscious Capitalism and what makes our technology so groundbreaking. Today I am going to give you all of the details that go into making this company one of the most potentially profitable enterprises to come in the realm of communication technologies in the past decade.

Gathering information on the number of American Sign Language (ASL) users is a tricky proposition. As we mentioned before, the US Census Bureau does not keep records on this topic. Indeed, until 1960, ASL was not even recognized as a language! The most reliable data that we can gather is from the 1970s, where we learned that there were about 500,000 native users, and some 2 million who learned it later in life. We estimate that in the US today, there are anywhere between 3 and 5 million users of ASL. This is a sizable number of people.

If we use the information gathered in one of TOP’s datasets, we can estimate roughly 7.38 in person interactions daily for the average person in the US under normal conditions. When applied to ASL users, this shows that there are as many as 22 - 37 million ASL interactions a day. When one adds in video teleconferencing and other visual media, this could be an order of magnitude higher. This is a truly massive amount of communication, all of which is a potential opportunity for our technology.

We currently operate the world’s largest database of ASL words and phrases in the world, one that is growing larger every day. Though this database has immense value on its own, it becomes truly extraordinary once we apply it to continuously train our ML models and services. We are becoming increasingly accurate! Our technology can be easily deployed to businesses to make them inclusive to ASL users, regardless of whether these users are employees or clientele.

This is also only the beginning. ASL may be one of the most discussed Sign Language, but there are many more around the world. Some of which, such as in India and China, have a substantially larger number of users. In the next few years, as we accrue success, we hope to be able to make the whole world more inclusive to sign language users, particularly in those areas where protections, like those afforded by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are not widely available.

The implications of our technology are endless, and it is not hard to imagine a process whereby our tech is incorporated into video conferencing applications. Our technology will revolutionize communication, but we cannot do it alone.

As such we have several different ways that investors can contribute to our firm and our technology, and we are eager to ensure that the return on investment is far greater than what is put in.

Join the journey with us!