To "speak" on the telephone, deaf people must use the TTY system. This system is outdated and difficult to use, and is not very fluid or natural. We attempted to solve this problem by creating a wearable piece of technology that can parse American Sign Language, process it into textual messages, and use the Twilio API to send a voice phone call.

Our wearable was designed in response to the Myo wearables getting shipped to the wrong location during the weekend of the hackathon. This allowed us more freedom, however, as we were able to design the technology just as our needs required.

The wearable is a glove. It senses sign language using flex sensors, a touch strip, and eventually an accelerometer. This data is taken and processed in C.

The user for this app would download an app onto their smart phone. There, they would enter the phone number they want to send a call to, and press a record button. When they press the record button, their gestures from the glove are recorded. When finished, the message is sent to the Twilio API to be converted from text to speech to phone call.

Share this project:

Updates