Young Kenyan invents smart gloves that convert sign language movements into audio speech

More than 30 million people around the globe have speech impairments and must rely on sign language, which poses a language barrier when seeking to communicate with non-sign language users.

Roy Allela’s six-year-old niece was born deaf and found it extremely difficult to communicate with her family, none of whom knew sign language.

The need to communicate and connect with her niece pushed 25-year-old Roy to invent smart gloves that convert sign language movements into audio speech.

Sign-io’s sign language to speech translation glove recognizes various letters signed by sign language users and transmits this data to an Android application where it is vocalized.

This feat saw Roy win admiration and recognition by the prestigious American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the world’s largest organization for mechanical engineers, during its prestigious 2017 ASME Innovation Showcase (ISHOW) competition.