Seven-Year-Old Girl From Mumbai Developed A Sign Language Learning App For Deaf Kids

Seven-year-old Hirranyaa Rajani is on her path to achieving great things.

A student from Mumbai-based Oberoi International School, she has built a sign language learning app for hearing impaired people.

Via an online platform that helps students learn coding called White Hat Jr, Hirranyaa has been teaching herself how to code. After gaining enough experience, she realized that she was capable of building an app. The first thing came to her mind was building an app for people who have the same condition as her brother.

Hirrayaa’s brother needs to use a wheelchair all his life, so she has always had empathy for people with handicaps. When she was thinking about how to help him with her new coding ability, she realized she could also help people who are hearing impaired.

Hirranya saw how sign language is used by deaf people for their communication, which intrigued her interest. This led to her creating an app teaching sign language to a deaf person without having to go anywhere.

The app is like a system for digital flashcards. From all the basic words that are available in the app, users can simply pick one word like “hello,” “please,” or “emergency” and they will get the sign’s digital animation. Users can also enter a word they want to learn in sign language. The app then picks up the letters to translate them into sign language.

This is known as fingerspelling, which is how people learning sign language spell out a word. It’s helpful whenever you want to know what sign represents a word and how to spell out a person’s name.

An app like this would be useful, especially for kids who were born deaf as well as people who gradually lost their hearing when they grew up. It’s a simple way to get to know the basics of learning a new language by yourself.

At the moment, Hirranyaa is still improving her coding skills, hoping that one day she could develop something to help her brother. Nevertheless, being able to develop an app when she was still a seven years old kid is still really impressive.