Unless you understand sign language, watching someone sign to you will pretty much mean nothing, which can be frustrating for those who have no choice but to use it as their main method of communications, but until learning sign language becomes mandatory in schools, we guess this is just the reality of it as it stands.
However thankfully two University of Washington students, Thomas Pryor and Navid Azodi, have created a pair of gloves that can apparently translate American sign language into actual speech in real time. What this means is that you won’t need to figure out what the other person is saying as their actions will be translated into actual speech while they sign.
This is thanks to sensors built into the gloves that can measure their hand and wrist movements. The information is sent via Bluetooth to a computer to a program that then interprets the movements and converts them into words. While it only works with computers, there are plans to create a mobile app as well to help increase mobility.
That being said, the students have also made it abundantly clear that their glove was not created with the intention to change or criticize the way the deaf community speaks to one another, but rather it was designed to help bridge the communication gap and improve it so that everyone is on a level playing field. Unfortunately the gloves remain as a prototype so there’s no word on when it will be made a reality, but it does sound like pretty exciting progress.