Enabling the Deaf to Make an Essential Call

According to the World Health Organization over 5% of the world’s population have disabling hearing loss (432 million adults and 34 million children). In partnership with St. Ann’s Church & School for the Deaf we discovered a life threatening un-met need. For many with serious hearing impairment, access to 911 is delayed due to old technology that requires a relay of messages, endangering people in times of emergency.

Most of us have never considered how someone with an impairment, might not be able to communicate with emergency services, or face a delay in getting help, it is truly terrifying.

This communication challenge is one reason why deaf people are 4x more likely to lose their lives during an emergency than hearing people. Everyone deserves the same access to emergency services and we don’t think it is okay that it is easier for a deaf person to order a pizza than it is for them to call an ambulance.

We were stunned to learn that the emergency relay services for the deaf that exist, can take 3 to 8 minutes and thatexisting text services, are not available nationwide. We decided to build an emergency services tool that would be accessible to everybody, everywhere.

To do this, we needed to bring the digital world to a service stuck in analogue. We needed to find a way to leverage technology to bridge the gap between the deaf community and emergency services. We needed to find a solution that would align with existing behaviors and familiar technology. Our tech team was immediately onboard with this mission and had a few insights that really helped the innovation and development of this, including using existing technology because innovation sometimes calls upon the needed rather than the new. Together we set out to find a no cost solution that would give deaf people a voice when they needed it the most, by eliminating unnecessary texting and creating shortcuts.

We engaged the deaf community, learning that the priority need was to be simple, universally actionable solution and consistent in execution. No bells and whistles, just an easy to use and reliable app that required little technology prowess or updates. We worked to apply preset data that can identify who and where someone is as well as speech to text and text to speech technology that will allow the deaf to speak directly to 911.

The resulting solution, still in development, will reduce the time for the deaf accessing 911 by 80%. And that astounding 80% could mean the difference between life and death for millions of people. We envision this approach being life changing for people with other communication challenges such as domestic abuse, gun violence, autism and cerebral palsy. We are actively engaging with partners in various emergency services the goal of scaling this service to help as many people as we can.