SignHere wins Rep. Jeff Jackson’s 2024 Congressional App Challenge in North Carolina’s 14th District

When asked what inspired the creation of SignHere, the students said, “The motivation behind our app, SignHere, was driven by personal experience and a want to impact the lives of others through our shared passion in technology. My relationship with my cousin, who is fully deaf in both ears, drove us to make an ASL translator. I love making connections with new people who I can find interests with, but I couldn’t even communicate with one of the members in my family. This troubled me for years before taking action to address this problem for myself and others. Learning ASL is a difficult and often inaccessible process, particularly for the 90% of deaf children who are born to hearing parents. Many of these parents struggle to learn ASL, making communication with their own children challenging. I wanted to create a tool that could bridge this gap and make ASL learning more accessible for diverse families. Our team was pushed by the mission that affected millions of children across the globe, with over 430 million deaf humans having disabled hearing, and certainly not enough that know ASL to communicate with them.

First, we wanted to see if anyone had tried to address our mission. It turns out that very little, if any, apps on the App Store or the Google Play store can translate ASL into text; the apps could only translate text into ASL. Traditional methods, like books, videos, or costly classes, don’t offer the immediate feedback necessary for mastering a visual language like ASL and simply aren’t as engaging. This gap in the market inspired us to innovate. By using our passion for programming and making a real world impact, we were able to create a system that recognizes hand gestures in real time and offers immediate guidance, something we found lacking in existing ASL learning resources. We wanted to create a tool that could not only teach ASL but also foster inclusivity and understanding between these communities. SignHere was born out of this vision to make ASL learning engaging, accessible, and impactful for everyone.”