About VoxSign Accessibility
VoxSign Accessibility is a speech to sign language platform for the Deaf and hard of hearing community in Uganda. Spoken audio and uploaded video are transcribed, matched against a curated Ugandan Sign Language vocabulary, and replayed by a 3D signing avatar in time with the original media.
The aim is simple. A classroom, a clinic or a meeting should not stop being understandable the moment the speaker starts talking.
What VoxSign does
Live translation
Speak into the app and VoxSign transcribes what you said, matches it against its sign vocabulary, and plays the signs back on a 3D avatar.
Learning sessions
Upload a video and watch it again with sign support alongside it, so recorded lectures and meetings are not lost to anyone who cannot hear them.
Captions throughout
Every translation carries a readable transcript and caption sized cues, because sign and text serve different people in the same room.
How it works
Transcribe
Audio is transcribed by a Whisper speech model fine tuned on Luganda, so the app understands how people here actually speak, not only textbook English.
Match
The transcript is matched word by word against a curated Ugandan Sign Language vocabulary, and each match becomes a timed cue.
Sign
The avatar plays those cues in order, synchronised to the original audio or video, so the signing keeps pace with the speaker.
What we hold ourselves to
We never invent a sign
The avatar only plays a sign that exists in our reviewed vocabulary. If a word has no sign yet, we say so rather than showing an approximation. A guess is worse than a gap, because a guess teaches the wrong thing.
Accessibility is the product
Text scaling, reduced motion, high contrast, colour blind support, full keyboard navigation and screen reader semantics are built into the app itself, not bolted on as an options page nobody finds.
Ugandan Sign Language first
VoxSign is built for Ugandan Sign Language and the Luganda and English spoken around it, rather than adapting a vocabulary borrowed from elsewhere.
Where we are
VoxSign is based at the Makerere Innovation and Incubation Centre in Kampala, Uganda. If you work with Deaf learners, run a service that should be accessible, or want to help grow the sign vocabulary, we would like to hear from you.
Get in touch