Many people find it challenging to communicate with people with hearing disabilities, mainly due to the difficulty of learning sign language.

This is a problem that Roy Allela came to solve by inventing Sign-IO, smart gloves that give the hearing impaired and deaf the ability to communicate with people who don’t know sign language.

Allela, a Kenyan citizen, was inspired to invent the glove by her deaf niece, who encountered communication challenges with her family members who were not conversant with sign language.

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According to Africa.com, the Sign-IO gloves are connected to a mobile application via Bluetooth, which converts the signs into audio speech.

They 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.

“My niece wears the gloves, pairs them to her phone or mine, then starts signing, and I’m able to understand what she’s saying,” Allela told Africa.com.

The technology is capable of translating sign language at all speeds and has a 93 per cent accuracy in language, gender, and audio pitch.

“People speak at different speeds, and it’s the same with people who sign – some are really fast, others are slow, so we integrated that into the mobile application so that it’s comfortable for anyone to use it,”

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“It fights the stigma associated with being deaf and having a speech impediment. If the gloves look cool, every kid will want to know why you have them on,” said Allela.

The invention earned Allela global recognition and was awarded for winning the Hardware Trailblazer Award during the American Society of Mechanical Engineers global finals contest in 2017.