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Including people of all abilities in the digital revolution
Hand to hand: Isara contains various features such as browsing signs by hand shape
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Hand to hand: Isara contains various features such as browsing signs by hand shape.
When social entrepreneur Rizky Ario decided to build his startup, dreamBender, his mission was to use technology to help solve social problems.
He wants to make sure that technology really is for everyone ' including people of all abilities.
'Digital inclusion is thus the foundation of our company ' we ask how can technology be made accessible for people with a disability,' he said.
He created Isara, an open sign language dictionary and learning application that aims to spread awareness of the importance of sign language as a mother tongue for the hearing impaired.
'Indonesia still adopts a sign system, and that's different from sign language in that it is a literal translation of the Indonesian language and uses the same grammatical structure,' he said.
'Schools for the disabled [SLB] use the sign system only, and that actually hampers the learning process as they can't understand the lesson because the language is different.'
Indonesia's sign language system (SIBI), created by the Education and Culture Ministry, is currently used to teach deaf children in SLBs and also to interpret on national television.
Unlike sign systems, Indonesian sign language (BISINDO) does not follow the Indonesian language's grammatical structure and is more widely used by members of the Indonesian deaf community. Its grammatical structure is easier as different concepts are portrayed by a combination of facial expressions and gestures.
Moreover, sign language is not sequential, so it allows signers to communicate what they want to say much faster than they could using the sign system.
With that in mind, in 2011 Ario decided to focus on developing a program that could help people learn more about sign language.
He consulted with people from deaf communities, including the Indonesia Deaf People's Welfare Movement (Gerkatin), to understand their needs more fully and how to provide solutions.
Ario also submitted the idea of Isara, which means 'sign' in Sanskrit, to the Indonesia ICT Awards, but it lost to another dreamBender project, Sparkins. Despite the loss, Isara was chosen by the committee for nomination in the Asia Pacific ICT Awards.
To his surprise, Isara won first place.
'From there on, we started to seriously develop the system for Isara,' he said.
The dreamBender team then came up with a system that provides interactive, real-time, elegantly designed sign language learning through the use of a motion sensor, enabling users to practice their gestures and receive feedback until they perfect them.
The company also worked together with organizations for the hearing impaired to develop a vocabulary list for inclusion in the app's dictionary.
'To learn about a language, you need to have a dictionary,' Ario said.
As it's an open dictionary, anyone with the Internet can contribute to the content, providing vocabulary from their local language, or reviewing existing content.
'The content will continuously evolve as users come from various backgrounds,' he said.
The application also features images and other visual aids that make the learning process intuitive, effective and fun.
'We also have a story telling program for children that offers stories and videos developed by deaf people.'
The system has already been adopted by 20 schools and organizations that work with the hearing impaired in Bandung, Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Magelang and Surakarta.
However, Ario said that some schools had initially rejected Isara when they were first introduced to it.
'People just having different views was the usual cause behind rejections. Some schools later agreed to adopt Isara after we told them that the government had also supported it, while some are still reluctant to use it,' he said.
Apart from the desktop application, Isara has also been available for download on smartphones using iOS and Android
'We want to make it accessible for anyone, because sign language is a language for everyone, not just deaf people,' Ario said.
Isara has received a lot of national and international recognition. Recently, the Arthur Guinness Project and Ashoka Changemakers have also selected dreamBender as the winner of the 'Makers of More' international social entrepreneur challenge for their achievements with Isara.
Ario, 26 years old, built dreamBender shortly before he graduated from the Telkom Institute of Technology in Bandung, West Java.
He asked his friends who have been working together with him on a variety of IT competition entries to join him so they could realize their dreams together.
'Upon graduation, I also worked at a telecommunications company in Jakarta, and I came to Bandung every week to work on dreamBender projects,' said Ario, an admirer of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
After nine months, he quit his Jakarta job to focus completely on dreamBender.
Ario said that although he did not have any formal business education, he learned a lot about entrepreneurship from his work on competitions.
'I learned through the competitions about my strengths, weaknesses and what kind of people I need to work with me. I also met lots of people. I think that's more effective than learning in class,' he said.
'But my CFO has business background.'
Now, apart from rolling out his Isara system to more cities, dreamBender will also work on another new project Sparkins that uses the Perkins Brailler technique in a tablet application for blind people.
'I want every project that we make to really have an impact on people ' enabling people through technology,' said Ario.
' Photos courtesy of dreamBender
