Today-July 17
A group of final-year Nanyang Technological University students was inspired by potrayals of sign language on screen to make learning of the language more accessible. Their app, Sign2Sign, won a prize in a recent international competition by tech giant Microsoft. Meanwhile, award-winning young designer Kevin Chiam, together with collectibles retailer Mighty Jaxx, recently started selling Folks Kitchenware. Mr Chiam was inspired to design this set of kitchen tools specially designed to be safer for people with vision loss, after watching a past MasterChef winner who is visually impaired. After watching a number of television dramas and movies which featured individuals with hearing loss and how they interact with each other, Ms Anastasia Patricks was inspired to learn more about sign language. Ms Patricks, 24, who was searching for a “meaningful” final year project for her engineering course at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), decided to research sign language more with two of her peers, Richardson Qiu and Steven Rachman. They soon realised that while there was a set way of communicating within the deaf community, that ability to communicate did not always extend to the families and friends of those who were deaf or had hearing loss. This lead the trio, who recently graduated, to create Sign2Sign, a sign language learning app with interactive and bite-sized lesson structures similar to popular language learning app, Duolingo. Their efforts landed them as the Asian regional winner for the Lifestyle category at at Microsoft’s Imagine Cup 2022, an annual global competition for students to create inspiring and inclusive projects that began last September and culminated in May. Microsoft said there were applications from “thousands of students” from over 160 countries for this year’s competition. The team won US$2,500 (S$3,499) in cash and a top up of US$2,500 in additional funding by Microsoft to further develop Sign2Sign. Read more at:
