DeftSign
Over 6 million people in the United States have a speech impediment. However, only 2 million own an AAC device, which allows them to communicate more easily. The price of one AAC device can range from $6,000 to $11,500. I formed a team with two other students to develop a device that has the same functionality as an AAC device while being affordable and easy to use. We met every week and worked on hardware and software design, and so far competed in two challenges.
The Deftsign Glove Is a product to help speech-impaired people, primarily children, better communicate outside of their familiar environment. Our product has 2 components. The first one is a glove that takes hand gestures as input and converts them into pre-programmed sequences of speech and displayed text.
The second component is a smartphone app that is used to train the glove and store phrases that the user has created. The signals from the glove are transmitted to the user’s smartphone via Bluetooth, to ensure that the user has full mobility and can use the glove anywhere.
The glove helps speech-impaired people develop pre-programmed phrases that they can activate via hand movements.
Competitions
Diamond Challenge
Last year the Deftsign team competed in the Diamond Challenge, an international competition for innovating young companies. We were invited to the pitch round to share the Deftsign Glove with potential investors who can help fund our project
Conrad Challenge
We competed in the Conrad Challenge, another international innovation competition aimed at helping different communities. We became semi-finalists in this competition.
Challenges in the Future
In the future, we will continue to compete in challenges, and are working to fund our product. Some competitions that we are preparing for include the Anual SourceAmerica Design Challenge, the Image Cup, and the ISEF Fair.