As America prepared for Hurricane Irma in September 2017, an emergency operations centre in Florida gave a briefing to residents to warn and advise them of the upcoming dangers. The person providing the sign language however, struggled. The amateur interpreter, a lifeguard who has a deaf brother, signed to viewers "Pizza want you are need be bear monster” instead of “We just need you to be safe, our shelters are open.”

 

It echoes the scandal of Nelson Mandela’s memorial in 2013, when a sign language interpreter gesturing nonsense to viewers overshadowed the event.

 

Such incidents may seem amusing, but to the world’s deaf and hearing-impaired population they are a reminder of the ignorance and marginalisation that can accompany their condition. And the consequences could easily be damaging and even dangerous.

 

Jordanian start up Mind Rockets Inc. is hoping its technology can provide a solution. What began as a high school project for Mahmood Darawsheh, is fast becoming one of the most promising social enterprises to emerge from the Middle East.

 

Mind Rockets produces assistive technologies for the deaf and hearing-impaired and began five years ago with Mimix, an application that translates both spoken and written English into American sign language (ASL), which is acted out by an avatar. Mr Darawsheh uploaded the app onto the Apple and Android mobile appstores while still in high school and it has since amassed more than 72,000 users.

 

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) five per cent of the world’s population live with disabling hearing loss: that’s more than 360 million people.  Saudi Arabia has the highest recorded number of deaf people in the Arab world with 720,000, while Jordan has 40,000.

 

Through the app, an anonymous investor reached out to Mr Darawsheh, offering seed investment to develop the same technology for Arabic language users. This initial investment became the catalyst for Mr Darawsheh to launch Mind Rockets as a company in 2016.

 

The Arabic version of its technology, called Turjuman, was launched last year on the Android appstore and currently has more than 10,000 users, most of whom are based in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

 

Turjuman was initially developed using the Unified Arabic Sign Language, the equivalent to modern standard Arabic, but the app also provides regional sign language for the dialects of the GCC and the Levant.

 

Users of the app can either speak or write a message, which the avatar acts out in real time. The message can also be sent as a video to messaging apps so that deaf users can communicate freely. Mind Rockets has also developed a sign language keyboard, which translates sign language symbols into written text.

 

According to the World Federation for the Deaf, 80 per cent of the world’s deaf population is illiterate and so simply providing subtitles is not enough.

 

“They’re highly marginalised, only one to two per cent of the deaf population receive their education in sign language,” says Malek Zuaiter, business development executive at Mind Rockets. “It’s their mother language, they should be educated in that.”

 

But that’s a right that is unlikely to be realised in the near future. According to the Nyle DiMarco Foundation, a US-based non-profit organisation working to increase sign language education for deaf children, just 25 per cent of parents with deaf children use sign language. And when 90 per cent of deaf people are born to hearing parents with little to no knowledge of sign language, deaf children are more commonly subject to language deprivation, which further marginalises them from society and prevents them from fulfilling their potential.

 

The viable alternative today is to make use of technology to provide sign language for all types of platforms and media, to both teach and enhance the lives of deaf people.

 

Mind Rockets initially worked on a ‘freemium’ model, whereby the basic dictionary was available free with charges being made for use of a wider dictionary, but the team made the decision to provide the entire service free for the end user.

 

“We made everything free after we realised it has an impact at an institutional level,” says Zuaiter. “We can integrate this avatar anywhere including in airlines, embassies, banks and ATM machines. We decided that should be our main business model. We don’t want the deaf community to pay, we should charge organisations to become accessible to deaf people.”

 

The team won the K Start Up Grand Challenge, a huge competition launched by the government of South Korea to encourage start-ups and small businesses to innovate. From more than 4,000 applications, Mind Rockets came out on top and won a residency in Seoul’s Pangyo Startup Campus accelerator programme to develop their business.

 

The team began developing Korean sign language and used the opportunity to expand their network.

 

Before traveling to Korea however, the Mind Rockets team began their application process for Seedstars World, a start up competition where the best businesses from emerging markets are chosen to present at a global summit, which took place in Switzerland this year in April. Out of the 70 start-ups that made it to Switzerland, Mind Rockets won the public vote award.

 

“Seedstars opened up huge doors with regards to exposure,” says Zuaiter. “After that we went to Mobile World Congress and got featured in PC Magazine and that was huge because Facebook reached out to us.”

 

Mind Rockets was one of the few start ups selected to meet with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg who was interested in the company’s mission and technology.

 

“He selected a couple of promising start ups to see how they can cooperate, so we’re still talking to them,” says Zuaiter.

 

The start up’s latest product is an avatar which provides sign language for web pages. Since such a large section of the world’s deaf community are illiterate, they still require sign language to make full use of the internet. “We found out through the app and technology, they’re learning how to read, so there’s a huge potential to educate,” Zuaiter notes.

 

The technology has been launched with a few websites in Jordan including Creative Investments, which has a series of websites including food, wedding and events.

 

“One problem we face is that many organisations don’t see this [providing sign language] as an obligation,” says Zuaiter. “But it’s about reaching the right people, there are people who want something like this to appear so they can support it.”

 

The company is in talks with Ahl Al Hima in the UAE to try to increase their reach and is currently working on improving the facial expressions of its avatar, which is a “huge part of sign language” according to Zuaiter.

 

For the time being, Mind Rockets is looking to hire more deaf people onto its team to ensure they’re involved in every stage of development. It is also hoping to attract further investment in a bid to enhance its technology and try to improve the lives of deaf people around the world and afford them a level of independence.

 

That a solution for the problems experienced by the world’s deaf people originated here in the Middle East is clearly a source of pride.