NEW AFRICAN INVENTIONS - SIGN IO - SMART GLOVES THAT TURN SIGN LANGUAGE INTO SPEECH

In simple statistics, more than 30 million people around the world have speech impairments and must rely on sign language to communicate.

The 25 year old Roy Allela invented the gloves after her six year old niece was born deaf and found it extremely difficult to communicate with her family, who didn't know sign language.
Sign IO sign language to audio speech translation glove recognizes various letters and movements signed by sign language users and transmits this data to an Android application where it is vocalized.

The gloves have flex sensors that are placed on each finger and have the capacity to quantify the bend of a finger and process the letter being signed.
Using Bluetooth, the gloves are connected to Mobile application, the Allela also developed, which then converts the sign into audio speech.

Through the App, users are able to set the language, gender, and the pitch of Audio voice, with accuracy results averaging 93%.
The glove shall help many deaf people, not only to translate but also stigma associated with being deaf and having speech impediment.