Signly is pleased to welcome Access Vine to the Signly family. As an early adopter of Signly's Sign Language as a Service (SLaaS) software, Amanda Tuite, CEO, saw the potential early on. She says, "As a deaf advocate, there is so much work to be done to ensure that access to sign language is available for everyone who needs it. This is the first step towards inclusion of the deaf community who use sign language."
The technology takes just 30 minutes to integrate and allows progressive organizations who want to go "beyond WCAG compliance"; to add sign language to their website. The most popular online journeys are translated prior to launch; visitors who use sign language can request any page to be translated. Signly manages all content changes – in fact, it is a zero-touch process for the website manager.
According to Amanda Tuite, "Many people assume that text-based materials, such as paragraphs on the website or web-based digital platforms in English, are accessible to the deaf community. This is not necessarily true. ASL is a visual language and does not follow English grammar structure. This is why it’s best to make websites and other physical materials accessible in ASL. This will ensure that content is clear and accessible for deaf people who use ASL or sign language as their primary language”.
To celebrate the partnership, a free trial is available on Microsoft's Azure Marketplace.
For more information, please contact Amanda Tuite.
Email: Amanda@AccessVine.co
I'm relieved this isn't one of those AI solutions to ASL/sign language! This truly is a way for organizations to go above and beyond when it comes to d/Deaf folks. It can be a surprise to many people (just about everyone I've ever talked to about this) that ASL/sign language doesn't reflect the grammar and syntax of the language it is sign for. This usually comes up in the context of captions and I liken it to reading a subtitled movie in a language that you took some classes in 20 years ago. You might be able to read a word here or there, you can get some context from the visuals, but it is definitely still a foreign language.