The American Society for Deaf Children's mission:

BRINGING FAMILIES TOGETHER THROUGH AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE

Since 1967, ASDC has been supporting parents of children who are deaf and hard of hearing. We believe that deafness is not a disability, but language deprivation is. That’s why it’s our mission to ensure that every deaf child can learn sign language from the very start.

To address language deprivation and help bridge the communication barrier between the deaf and the hearing we partnered with the American Society for Deaf Children to create Fingerspelling.xyz.

Fingerspelling uses AI and Machine Vision to teach you the ASL Alphabet.

Every year 2 - 3 out of every 1,000 children born in the US are deaf or hard-of-hearing. 90% of these children are born to hearing parents, and in many cases, their child is the first deaf person these parents have ever encountered.

Without being introduced to sign language at an early stage, a deaf child may miss out on learning language. This can lead to language delay or deprivation, which has long-term negative impacts on a child’s life. That is why it is so important that parents of deaf children have the opportunity to learn American Sign Language (ASL) as soon as possible.

Instead of simply talking about - or visualising the ASl alphabet - we wanted to make a tool that can actually help you learn the ASL alphabet.

Fingerspelling.xyz is a browser-based app that uses a webcam and machine learning to analyze your hand shapes so you can learn to sign the ASL alphabet correctly.

To start, you are given a series of words and the computer shows you a 3D model of how your hand should be positioned for each letter. When you sign the word, the camera tracks your hand movements and gives you feedback so you can make corrections as needed. This helps you quickly develop your fingerspelling skills and move to the next level of the program.

The site was launched in late April 2021 - and so far over 150.000 correct hand-signs have been made.

The site has been featured across a variety of news and blogs - including Engadget, Mashable and Yahoo. And we have helped bridge the gap between the hearing and the deaf.