"One day we hope to give a voice to those who can't speak," says Hadeel Ayoub.
Except she doesn't say it with her mouth, she signs it with her hands. Just a few seconds later, a computerized voice announces the sentence from her wrist.
Ayoub is the founder of BrightSign, a smart glove that empowers speech-disabled people to have better daily communications. When it launches later this year it will cost just a fraction (in the hundreds rather than thousands of dollars) of what other high-end assistive devices do.
All of BrightSign's smart sensors are embedded in a thin transparent “underglove” that can be worn inside different style outer gloves. And its hardware is packaged in a slim wristband.
BrightSign will be used by kids at school or the park, who want to “talk” to other, non-signing children, and by adults who are fed up with waiting for translators either at work or out and about.
It will also help staff at hospitals, airports and other public bodies that don’t always have a sign expert available.
Given that there are 70 million people in the world who use sign language as their primary language, and only 1.4 million have access to expensive sign language education and assistive technology, BrightSign could be a global gamechanger.
Now Ayoub is raising £1 million ($1.4 million) to fund BrightSign's 2018 launch.
“I want to give people independence and liberation: two-way communication—the way we do it—while maintaining eye contact,” says Ayoub.
Building a business with purpose
Ayoub didn’t always dream of developing assistive technology: she started off by building a virtual painting glove while studying Computational Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2014
But serendipity called when her course ran a program on artificial intelligence in social care: this prompted the technologist to change the output of her smart glove to simple sign translation.
It was certainly a bold decision for Ayoub to turn her sign-to-speech smart glove into a business: many before her had tried and failed to build anything accurate enough to be marketable.
“Everybody told me not to do it, everybody thought it was undoable,” recalls Ayoub. “But the more I visited schools and sat and tested with real families, the more I realized how great the need was and that I had to succeed, even if it took a long time.”
Overcoming huge challenges
Through her research, the founder realized that the big shortfalling of her predecessors was a one-gesture-fits-all approach.
“They always sent their gloves out with pre-installed gesture libraries, but everyone has a different hand gesture, different motor abilities, different ways of moving,” she explains.
With BrightSign you record and name your own gestures: a shift that means that BrightSign users now benefit from 97% accuracy.
Such a customizable product won’t just help those using traditional signing, but also means that BrightSign can be used by anyone who communicates with their hands.
There are many people who experience learning or communication difficulties and prefer alternative sign languages like Makaton, for example, as well as stroke-impaired adults, or those with autism who may use entirely unique signs.
BrightSign today
BrightSign has had to constantly evolve to become fit for purpose. Ayoub remembers the first time she made the gloves tech removable (after watching kids getting it messy in them).
There was the time she added an on/off button (after the gloves kept incorrectly translating every movement a wearer made), and the development of these buttons into gesture commands (because the whole point, said families, was to be button-free).
Created with the support of partners like the Central Research Laboratory, Women of Wearables, and local schools in London’s Greenwich and Charlton, the founder now has several versions prepared for launch.
The first, predominantly aimed at children, has a more substantial wristband with its own embedded screen and audio output, freeing youngsters from handheld devices.
Ayoub has also developed a lighter version for the adult deaf community, which can send spoken translations directly to the wearer's smartphone.
Around 700 customers are already on Ayoub’s preorder list.
A social venture that makes business sense
Built off the back of £100,000 in awards and grants from the likes of IBM and Booking.com (Brightsign is today a finalist in the AXA Health Tech & You awards), Ayoub’s smart gloves will cost “a few hundred” pounds (or dollars) at launch.
This might sound like a lot, but there are no other assistive technologies like BrightSign, says Ayoub, and other solutions typically cost upward of £2,000 ($2,700)
The founder also has “all her ducks” in a line for the BrightSigh launch, having pinpointed the necessary partner manufacturers, certifications and accessibility platforms she will work with (these would allow the device to be issued free-of-cost by educational institutions, the NHS or professional enabling companies).
Now Ayoub is in the process of fundraising, having already visited investors as far afield as L.A., China and South Korea.
A total of £1 million ($1.4 million) would allow BrightSign to become a fully-operational self-sustaining company by the end of the year; while a smaller round of £250,000 ($344,000) would allow Ayoub to fulfill the growing number of orders already on her waiting list, but would require outsourcing.
Ayoub also hopes to eventually be able to sell her technology to other industries (the founder has already been approached by individuals working in motion capture, virtual reality games and the Ministry of Defence).
The big dream
The big dream is to build a business that will change millions of lives, says Ayoub.
“This is a cutting-edge technology, but it has a humanitarian element to it. It will have a community impact,” she explains.
And it’s this human element that has so clearly motivated Ayoub to get this far. The founder is still visibly moved when she recalls the reaction of one of her first child testers, an 8-year-old-boy with autism.
“He just got up and started running around in circles,” she remembers. “I didn't know what that meant, but his mom said ‘This is what he does when he’s ecstatic, he doesn't know how to deal with extreme happiness.'”
Afterwards Ayoub felt she had to give the young tester a glove to keep, as she did with more than a dozen of her early adopters.
“Once you give children that freedom you can't take it away from them,” says the founder.
Hopefully BrightSigns high-tech gloves will help many millions more feel free.
