The Emoti Sounds is A plug-in for the most popular screen reader in the world that brings much more emotion to their lives with a simple idea: giving sounds to Emoticons. Now, instead of a cold narration, they can hear genuine emotions. “Emoticon kiss” has become a real kiss sound. “Emoticon laughing" has become an out and loud real laugh. And more than 70 Emoticons has become real. Because for them, hearing is a way of seeing.

To create the plug in we’ve made an important partnership with one of the most famous Institutes in the world for visually impaired students, the Benjamin Constant Institute. They’ve helped us on developing the sounds. To launched the project we’ve created a video where the visually impaired students could test the plug-in. The test and the video were a huge successes. Emoti Sounds is now an open source project, which means that anyone can enjoy and help the project grows. First, we identified the most popular Emoticons from social networks. Then, in partnership with one of the biggest Institutes in the world for visually impaired students, we recorded sounds to represent each one of the Emoticons. And created an update for NVDA, the most famous screen reader in the world. Thus, cold narrations is out, real emotions are in.

The video presenting the idea instantly became viral reaching 200.000 people in just two weeks,

which helped us with an increase of 32% of fans on our Facebook page. Many important people started to talk about the idea, including the Sao Paulo Government that said: “Simple Amazing!.” And the president of Benjamin Constant Institute compare the idea with ideas that have completely changed visually impaired peoples lives saying: “Braille, Audio-guide and now the Emoti Sounds.” At the end of the second month we’ve already had more than 1,5 million in earn media and more than 90.000 blog mentions. But the best of all, more than 10 thousand download on launch month.

Emoti Sounds create a truly relationship with visually impaired people by giving them the chance to be part of the new world language: the language of Emoticons. To make it possible we’ve create a plugin for the most popular screen reader in the world, the NVDA. The plugin can translate the emoticon code from social networks to real sounds with genuine emotions. We’ve created more than 70 sounds based on the most used Emoticons. Now with the Emoti Sounds they can finally understand the Emoticons language and also have fun sending Emoticons to their friends.

To surf on the internet, visually impaired people use screen readers that transform text into voice. The problem is when it’s not a text, but an Emoticon that pops up. Instead of that funny and emotional image you are used to see, for visually impaired people Emoticons are just a cold and emotionless narration. TIM, the biggest Brazilian telecom company, first and foremost promise is to deliver the best internet experience. So, when we realised that a big part of the society are not able to experience the best of the internet, we’ve decided to change this history. The Emoti Sounds is a true celebration of this promise.