Websites and information screens are everywhere - but how useful is digital media when your first language is sign language? For people like Anna, a 32-year-old deaf woman from Germany, the digital world can be a frustrating place.  

‘The native language of deaf people is sign language,’ Anna explains. ‘Written information is difficult to understand for us – it’s like a foreign language.’  

Sign languages use visual signs to communicate. They are as complex and nuanced as any spoken language. Translations into sign language – which usually involve human actors recording videos in a studio – tend to be expensive and time-consuming. As a result, significant part of digitally available content has remained inaccessible to deaf people.  

Now – for Anna, and thousands like her – new technology is giving access to digital information in a way that wasn’t possible before. Sign Time provides quick and cost-effective sign language translation through an animated avatar.  

Headquartered in Vienna, Sign Time is the leading partner in the SiMAX project and was supported by a guarantee for social entrepreneurship under the EU Programme for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI). 

As well as producing animated translation for many websites, Sign Time has been working with museums to translate the content of their audio guides and smartphone apps, and to add sign language interpreters to video content. 

Currently focused on the German market, Sign Time plans to expand its services to include the other five main sign languages in Europe within two years, and to implement real- time translation services in new contexts – such as loudspeaker announcements in public transportation. 

For Anna, it is a long-awaited advancement that will allow her to feel like a true member of the digital community.  

'It's great that the avatars are translating websites. As there are more and more translations coming up, we finally can be part of the information society too!'