MIT Solve

Solution Overview

Solution Name:

Elix: digital inclusion in sign language

One-line solution summary:

Elix is a digital solution that gives the definition of a word in sign language or its sign, facilitating access to reading for deaf people

Pitch your solution.

Deaf people using sign language face severe difficulties with reading, and more generally with accessing written language. Today there is no way to make the information, especially on the internet, accessible in sign language, apart from translating the contents, which represents a significant cost for constantly evolving content.

This inaccessibility makes it difficult or even impossible to access information, administrative procedures and more generally the formidable resource that the web constitutes.

Our solution makes the internet accessible in sign language thanks to the add-on for browsers Bulle Elix connected to the online dictionary Elix. When browsing, by clicking on a word you don’t understand, you get a free and direct access to its definition in sign language or its sign.

Created in France for the 120 000 deaf people and the 500 000 caregivers using sign language, Elix can be applied to every sign language in the world (70 million people, World Federation of Deaf People).

Film your elevator pitch.

What specific problem are you solving?

The specific problem we are facing is digital inclusion for deaf people using Sign Language, because deaf people encounter serious reading difficulties, and more generally access to written language (more than 40% illiteracy).

In a digital world, citizens must know how to navigate on the web to access public and private services, which gives them citizenship (access to social rights, voting, driving license, etc.) and autonomy (ordering a meal, consulting offers for job, make an appointment with the doctor…). This is even more true for the deaf who are confronted with a difficulty of direct communication and therefore indirect communication tools such as the web are relays that can change their lives: no need to phone to make an appointment with the doctor! But to get to that you have to make sure that web browsing is accessible for them.

70 millions people use Sign language as a mother tongue in the world :

120,000 in France
90,000 in the UK
500,000 in the USA
5 million people in Brazil
6 million people in India
21 million people in China

Where Elix is concerned (French Sign Language in french spoken countries), we have 282,909 users.

What is your solution?

The bilingual dictionary Elix (French / French Sign Language) works like a search engine: you type in the word for which you are looking for the meaning or the sign and you get it (37,000 videos of signs and definitions). Elix thus facilitates access to written French for deaf people and allows everyone to have access to French Sign Language (families, friends, colleagues, learners).

In addition, the Bulle Elix is an add-on for a web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) that allows you to display in a tooltip the definition of a word in sign language or its sign, by directly accessing the Elix dictionary.

Features:

Access to Elix sign videos and Elix definition videos
Ability to navigate between different meanings of a word when it has several
Automatic synchronization with data from Elix
Possibility to request a video when it has not yet been produced
Sharing a video on social networks

With the Bulle Elix, no need to leave the webpage where you are. A simple right click on a word is enough to activate the tooltip to obtain the definition and / or the required sign.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/elix/bkodbojjdhggkkkncjogkdojhkfbjimi/null

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

Elix and the Bulle Elix today:

Elix has been around for 10 years as a bilingual French / LSF dictionary and the Bulle Elix, launched in 2019, gives a free and direct access to Elix. These solutions fulfill 2 main objectives:

fighting illiteracy among the deaf
lexicalize the FSL (French Sign Language) to enrich the vocabulary of those who learn or use this language.

The Elix dictionary:

71,000 active users
6,000 visits per day
40,000 videos of signs and definitions

The Elix app:

35,000 users
250 downloads per day
Rating of 4 out of 5 on the Android and iOS stores

The Bulle Elix:

1500 active users

An innovation built with deaf people:

The Elix project is a collaborative project in which deaf people are involved as contributors, critics, idea carriers, and promoters.

Several deaf employees have succeeded in carrying Elix to Signes de sens, whether for the animation of networks and the community or even the contribution to videos of signs and definitions (currently 2 deaf people are directly involved in the team).

Anchoring in the deaf community is also essential: support from the main national players (International Visual Thetre, MediaPi, Institut National des Jeunes Sourds de Paris, Union Nationale pour l’Insertion Sociale du Déficient Auditif, Sourdmédia, etc.).

Deaf people have been involved in Elix since its inception and continue to be involved in different forms:

participation of deaf volunteers in the animation of key events that we organize around LSF and deaf culture with deaf / hearing meetings and discussion with users
deaf contributors and translators who add content to Elix from home or in our premises
regular exchanges with medico-social structures which support deaf people

Direct beneficiaries:

deaf people practicing sign language to strengthen their autonomy in carrying out all of their online procedures (citizenship, rights, leisure, information, culture, etc.) => 120,000 people
professional or family helpers working with deaf people (educators, teachers) => 500,000 people
sign language professionals => students, interpreters
learners in sign language training

Other beneficiaries:

curious people wishing to discover sign language

User feedback from the IOS and Android Store:

" Great ! Super and Fast! It's practical and it allows us to use it as often as possible! "

"Great ! I have been using the Elix dictionary for a few years and already it is a very useful site / app for those who want to learn words and their definitions in FSL. Now with this extension it is even easier to search for an unknown word while surfing the web! Friendly and responsive user interface. I love it ! Well done, Signes de sens. ”

Impact:

By facilitating access to comprehension of written French, our project:

is a simple and inexpensive way to increase the accessibility of websites created by website developers and editors
Makes the web accessible (information, procedures, etc.) to 120,000 deaf signers in France, and plans to do so internationally (500,000 deaf signers in the USA, 90,000 in the United Kingdom, etc.)
contributes to divide the illiteracy rate among the deaf by 4 to return to the national average (10% of the total population)
divides by 4 the dropouts of online services for deaf audiences who are often discouraged because they do not understand

Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Equip everyone, regardless of age, gender, education, location, or ability, with culturally relevant digital literacy skills to enable participation in the digital economy.

Explain how the problem you are addressing, the solution you have designed, and the population you are serving align with the Challenge.

Digital inclusion is critical for deaf people who face illiteracy massively (70%) so most of the web content is inaccessible to them (texte or videos even with captioning)

Translate into sign language all the web contents, always changing, is impossible.

Automatic translation (text to SL) does not work, because SL are so complex. Progress are made but the solution is far from being done and it will need the contents of Elix to train the AI.

Elix solves this problem today (access to the FSL version of definitions and words), and prepares the future (databases of contents to train AI).

In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?

Lille, France

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Growth: An organization with an established product, service, or business model rolled out in one or, ideally, several communities, which is poised for further growth.

Explain why you selected this stage of development for your solution.

Elix was born in 2011. The MVP of the Bulle Elix was launched in november 2019.

Elix and the Bulle Elix are currently experiencing a period of growth. We are monitoring the progress described below and aiming for the internationalization of the system, the next step (scale).

Launch of the Bulle Elix prototype, November-December 2019:

1,025 users, 2 months after the launch
Feedbacks

Technical and ergonomic developments, January - November 2020:

Improvement of the interface (ergonomics, user experience, bugfix)
Implementation of the new Elix graphic charter
Improvement of the back office allowing the administration of the content of the various Elix services (Bulle Elix, Dico, App)

Deployment, January 2020 to present:

Increase in the number of definitions and signs available
Partnership with SMILE for the development of the KODA tool (platform for recording videos of signs by contributors)
Promotion of Elix / Bulle Elix

Massification / Internationalization, 2021-2025

Who is the Team Lead for your solution?

Simon Houriez, CEO of Signes de sens