Disimplify

Disimplify makes Discord accessible for everyone - from voice chat transcription to text translation for over 108 languages, image recognition/description, and even a text-to-speech feature!

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Inspiration

Discord is one of the largest social media platforms. In spite of this, it lacks crucial accessibility features which restrict disabled individuals from using it. As daily users of this platform, we built Disimplify as a means to expand Discord’s reach and make it a more inclusive, no barriers environment.

What it does

Disimplify makes Discord more accessible, enabling people with disabilities to use Discord with ease. For example, it provides the ability for voice calls to be transcribed for the hearing imparied, image recognition/description for the visually impaired, and also translation and text-to-speech features.

How we built it

Python: We used Python to develop the majority of Disimplify’s features. We learned to use the expansive python library to our advantage - in particular the discord.py library which allowed us to easily use Discord’s API’s. Javascript (Node.js): We used Javascript to develop the portion of our code that enables transcription. Javascript was used rather than Python due to the lack of audio support for the Python discord libraries. Discord.js, on the other hand, has this functionality. HTML, CSS: We used HTML and CSS to construct a frontend website design for Disimplify. APIs: Disimplify implemented a large variety of API’s - especially those from Google Cloud (Speech to Text, Translation, Vision) to give our project full functionality.

Challenges we ran into

One major challenge we ran into was the lack of support for audio in Discord’s Python library. There was no built-in functionality to record voice channels which meant that we had to write a portion of our bot using Discord’s Node.JS library. We had to learn how to use Javascript and NodeJS packages and had no prior exposure to either of these technologies.

Furthermore, we ran into some challenges with using API’s - we learned about JSON as a return format and the methods of parsing JSON files. We learned that not all API’s are created equal and discovered the need to experiment with API’s before using them. We ended up using a variety of APIs in order to support our needs.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re very proud of how Disimplify turned out - it easily and flawlessly allows for text transcription and image recognition. Furthermore, the text transcription is easy to use and is highly accurate as long as the participants of the voice call speak loudly enough. Most importantly, we’re proud of the fact that we were able to complete our project despite the technical hurdles that we had. There were many technologies that we had no prior exposure to and we were able to persevere through that challenge and more in order to create a fully functional end product.

What we learned

Throughout this project, we all learned about and refined our technical abilities. For backend development, we had to learn about a variety of API’s - be it the Discord.py library or the extensive list of Google Cloud API’s that we implemented. Additionally, we had to learn about JavaScript (specifically Node.JS) and the Discord.js library.

For the frontend development, we learned about and made use of the bootstrap framework in order to build a clean website.

What's next for Disimplify Bot

In the future, we’d like to create a better frontend integration for Disimplify so that it is easier for anyone without coding experience to set up the bot for their Discord server (without having to install the code or perform any technical tasks). We’d also like to improve our bot’s built-in settings and incorporate a database into our backend so we can store user preferences and make our product overall more user-friendly and accessible.

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