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Ypsilanti's Mobile Sign Language takes on web and smart phone apps

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

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Ypsilanti

Combining sign language with smart phone applications might not seem like the most obvious partnership, but it's an idea Mobile Sign Language is capitalizing on to create a new business.

Jason Gilbert (a sign language interpreter) and Judy Yu (a web developer) started playing around with the idea of creating a web-based sign language translator four years ago and have built it into a start-up at Ann Arbor SPARK's East Incubator in downtown Ypsilanti. The company is a winner of its recent elevator pitch competition. It recently hired a programmer to help it get its app to translate speech to sign language on the market this fall.

"I don't know of anyone else who is doing it on a phone," Gilbert says. "It's something that is really needed."

The start-up plans to create a variety of web- and mobile-based programs that enable sign language translation.

Source: Jason Gilbert, CEO of Mobile Sign Language
Writer: Jon Zemke