1. You sign
The camera captures your signing. Nothing is typed, nothing is written down, and no interpreter has to be scheduled in advance.
Sign to the camera on the device you already own. The app interprets your signing into spoken English and text, in real time, for whoever you are talking to.
The app runs on the phone, tablet, or laptop a user already has. No special hardware, no appointment, no third person in the room.
The camera captures your signing. Nothing is typed, nothing is written down, and no interpreter has to be scheduled in advance.
Computer vision reads the signing and large language models resolve it into natural English, using both standard ASL libraries and everything the app has learned about you.
Your message is delivered to the hearing person as spoken audio and on-screen text, in your words, at conversational speed.
The hearing person speaks their answer. The app converts that speech back into text and sign language for you, so the conversation runs both directions.
Intel, Nvidia, AMD, and Microsoft have all done serious work on sign language recognition, and we are glad they have. Their libraries and hardware are a real foundation. But a library can only ever describe the average signer, and no such person exists.
On setup, the app presents words and phrases and asks you to sign them to the camera. It analyzes those clips to understand your particular signing style: your speed, your hand shapes, your regional variations, the signs you personally use.
It then applies that style to standard signs to simulate how you would produce them, and generates large volumes of synthetic training data from a small amount of your real signing. That is what makes personalization practical instead of requiring hours of recording from every user.
Once your vocabulary is built, the app is ready to interpret your signing into spoken English, and it keeps improving as you use it.
We publish our timeline because donors and foundations deserve to see whether we hit our own dates.
Requirements finalized, development team hired, AI training data collection begun, platform architecture completed, and the first version of the Virtual Personal Interpreter built.
The app was offered to Deaf users on a nominal subscription basis and community engagement began, so that real signers, not lab conditions, started shaping the product.
Collecting structured feedback from Deaf testers, adjusting the application, growing the subscriber base, and opening the first corporate partnership pilots. This is the phase your donation funds directly.
Continuous improvement of interpretation capability, social media fundraising campaigns, growing the subscriber base, and pursuing corporate white label licensing that funds development long term.
Extending the platform to support the world's roughly 300 sign languages and their corresponding spoken languages, reaching the 70 million Deaf people worldwide who depend on sign language.
Our software engineering partner, providing the advanced development resources behind the platform build.
Deaf volunteers test the app, give feedback, and guide iterative improvements. Deaf educators and advocacy groups keep the work culturally accurate.
We track interpretation accuracy, session time, error frequency and resolution, and user satisfaction, and review the results quarterly with partners.
We are recruiting 200 Deaf testers for structured feedback cycles. Testers get early access and direct influence over how the interpreter handles real conversations.
You do not need any technical background. If you sign ASL and are willing to use the app and tell us honestly what breaks, you are exactly who we need.
Family members, ASL interpreters, and educators who want to help are welcome to sign up too. Tell us which you are in the form.
The gap between a working beta and an app any Deaf person can download is engineering hours. That is precisely what your donation buys.
DeafAI, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. FEIN 33-3594114. Every gift is tax deductible.