Elly Savatia, 22, and Lumona Mulengwa, 23, were working as mentors at the annual First Global Robotics event in 2019 when they realized there was a gap in communicating with deaf students across the country.
This aha moment resulted in the duo setting up Veezaviz, a Kenyan social enterprise technology startup.
The team at Veezaviz has since developed Echonoma, a digital sign language interpreter that can help you interact with a deaf person and interpret sign language in real-time using an Artificial Intelligence interpreter and an automated avatar.
The software is based on the Kenya sign language, and the initial version is free.
The plan is to roll out Echonoma in the next two months to the wider public once testing, corrections and smoothening out of bugs that is currently in progress, are completed. In particular, the team is working to ensure the automated avatar signs seamlessly and stays within the screen when signing so that you can see the entire signed message.
Echonoma aims to promote confidentiality in communication between the deaf and hearing community. Using the software, the deaf person signs into their phone camera, which is translated into text.
Then the hearing person using the software writes a text onto the phone that is then signed by the avatar. This eliminates the need for a translator to act as an interpreter, especially where sensitive information is involved. The strategy is to start with the education sector and eventually cater to the needs of the deaf in banking and healthcare, where privacy is a key concern.
Veezaviz was recently among the startups selected in the UNICEF Generation Unlimited (GenU) programme in 2022. GenU seeks to create better young people’s education, skills, employment and entrepreneurial opportunities.
As part of the GenU programme, the team got KES 1.5 million, training, mentorship and incubation at the UNICEF-backed Stem Impact Centre Hub in Nairobi to scale the project for a period of one year. This funding has helped Veezaviz’s product development, particularly in working closely with the deaf community to get their views, feedback and input on Echonoma as it is a novel assistive technology.
Watch their video below.
This story is featured on Safaricom Newsroom as part of this year’s International Day of Sign Languages 2022 celebrated on Friday, 23 September theme was “Building Inclusive Communities for All”.
