When it comes to innovators, Africa has not been shorthanded in competing with the best of them as more young inventors spark much needed changes in the tech and social innovation arenas. Recently, a young Kenyan innovator “Roy Allela” designed and created a prototype for a pair of gloves named “Sign-IO” that help bridge the communication gap between hearing and deaf people. The gloves receive and translate the sign language signals to audible communication. The gloves feature sensors located on each finger that detect the positioning and movements, while connected via Bluetooth to a cellular devise to provide text-to-speech function.
The gloves are currently in the prototype re-designing phase, thus unavailable to the public market just yet. The glove has already generated much anticipation and excitement for both industry and general consumer bases and have even won some awards from notable competitions. Sign-IO was the 2018 grand winner of the “Hardware Trailblazer Award” at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) global finals in New York and earned the second runner-up acknowledgement at the Royal Academy of Engineering Leaders in Innovation Fellowship in London.
