Hands up!

Google Translate supports 133 languages. None of them are sign languages. Yet, 1.3 million Canadians are sign language users. So, we developed a sign language translator.

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Google Translate supports 133 languages. None of them are sign languages. Yet, 1.3 million Canadians are sign language users. We developed a sign language translator because we believe in inclusivity, and inclusivity starts with integrating the mean of communication of people with disabilities in our daily lives.

What it does

Hands up! lets you translate from American Sign Language to English, and from English to American Sign Language. It currently only handles the letter of the alphabet and numbers.

How we built it

We used React for the frontend and Flask for the backend. As for the sign recognition portion, it was done in Python, using MediaPipe, OpenCV and Scikit Learn.

Challenges we ran into

It was the first time for all members of the team working with any of the technologies listed above. It was definitely challenging, and we had to overcome multiple bugs.

What's next for Hands up!

In the future, we would like to have a more complex database and introduce more words. We would also like to introduce more spoken and sign languages to make the web app more accessible and inclusive. We would also like to make the model better at detecting signs.

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