Huawei’s StorySign is an inclusive initiative, a free app that uses AI and augmented reality to make learning easier for deaf children
Following its blacklisting by the U.S., among the companies with which the U.S. administration prohibits doing business, Huawei is consolidating itself as a company engaged on several fronts. It had to sell Honor to ensure its future and at the same time it had to reinvent itself in a certain sense.
If before it was understandably focused on the hardware market, with high-profile but also low-end smartphones, tablets and computers with excellent commercial results, now Huawei is proposing itself in the West as a service company, with streaming apps like Huawei Video and others oriented to laudable purposes. Like StorySign, a project that uses all the knowledge accumulated over years of research and investment in the fields of artificial intelligence and augmented reality to help people with disabilities live a life as normal as possible. “At Huawei, our mission is to make the world a better place. We believe that technology should enrich people’s lives and that Artificial Intelligence can extend the boundaries of what is humanly possible,” the company began in the statement announcing StorySign.
What is Huawei StorySign
Storysign is a project that actually dates back to 2018, ambitious to the point that it took years to make it truly effective. Now StorySign has reached a satisfactory degree of maturity, and is ready to spend alongside deaf children to translate a book into sign language in real time.
“Learning to read,” says Huawei, “can be difficult for any child. For deaf children, it can be a real challenge. We knew that our technology could help open the door to the world of books to 32 million deaf children around the world, accompanying them into a universe of imagination, curiosity and creativity.”
StorySign is a free app whose goal is to help deaf children improve their reading skills by translating the normal text of selected books into sign language in real time, all thanks to a fusion of artificial intelligence and augmented reality.
The Huawei StorySign app is of course available to download for free from the Huawei AppGallery store, as well as from Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store.
How Huawei StorySign Works
The operation of Huawei StorySign can be summarized in a few steps. First, the child opens the book he or she wants to read, then opens the StorySign app, and finally adjusts the smartphone to frame the page.
Then Star, a virtual avatar, translates the words highlighted on the screen into sign language. At any time, you can pause reading and go back or forward in the text.
Among the fiction classics already supported by StorySign are: Your Friend Spotty, This (Not) is a Lion, Three Little Bunnies, Happy Birthday, What a Surprise, Spotty.
“We developed StorySign together with the European Deaf Union, the British Deaf Association, Penguin Books, Aardman Animations and other partners.
Our collaboration with Penguin Books has helped us bring to life some of the most beloved stories for children. Aardman allowed us to use cutting-edge technology that could capture movement and animation to ensure that Star’s expressions and hands perfectly reproduced sign language. In this way, we created a virtual animated character that is fun and loved by children.
With the help of the Associations of the Deaf, we were able to understand this challenge and find a technological solution that would make a difference for countless families. A solution that we hope will help improve learning for deaf children.”