Colombian Students Create ‘SignChat’, a Sign Language Chat App

Students from the San Buenaventura University, in Colombia, created a real-time chat app with sign language. What began as a class project in the research seedbed, is now an application that seeks the greatest possible inclusion to facilitate communication between people.

In this sense, the app stands out for incorporating a keyboard with the sign language alphabet and offers options to adjust the text size and contrasts, facilitating its use for people with low vision.

Colombian students create chat app with sign language

Harold Barrera, William Florez, Julio Diaz and Alejandro Diaz, students of the Systems Engineering program at the San Buenaventura University (USB), in Bogota, developed a mobile application that allows real-time communication with deaf people.

Under the direction of Professor Yamil Buenaño, the students created SignChat, the first application of its kind in Colombia. The application stands out for incorporating a keyboard with the sign language alphabet and offers options for adjusting text size and contrasts, facilitating its use by people with low vision.

In addition, it allows interaction between mobile devices and web messaging systems through a plugin.

“This is a new and innovative resource that will allow them to communicate more easily and, most importantly, to insert themselves in a better way into society, breaking down all the barriers that discrimination has imposed on them,” explained Buenaño, the professor of the faculty of systems engineering, who led the students’ project.

SignChat will enable communication with more than 550,000 Colombians with hearing impairment

SignChat seeks to facilitate communication between hearing people and people with disabilities (deaf or mute), and seeks to directly impact at least 553,000 Colombians who suffer from hearing impairment, according to data from the National Institute for the Deaf (Insor).

Users of the app can choose between communicating through sign language or textual Spanish. When selecting sign language, the special keyboard is activated, while the text option uses a traditional alphabetic keyboard.

“That way the process is ready to start the conversation by means of sent and received messages, similar to how WhatsApp works,” explains Professor Buenaño.

Those responsible for the application assured that SignChat will be available “in the coming days” for downloading from Android devices and as a web application.