Accessible Design for the Deaf: The Billion-Dollar Product Launchpad
There are 460 million Deaf and hard of hearing people around the world, what are the benefits of designing for us?
Captioning
Captioning was mandated and implemented so Deaf and Hard-of-hearing citizens could enjoy our TV series and movies.
While it’s usually too loud to hear the TV audio in bars or restaurants, anybody can watch the local news and sports games with captioning. Parents can binge on their live-action TV show while the kids are in bed.
As digital media content jumps exponentially, the captioning market is growing in hundreds of millions of new revenue annually.
Text Messaging
Deaf people struggled with the telephone thus we pushed for the development of text messaging (and real-time text) a decade ahead of its time. At last, we could finally communicate with our friends on the go.
You could even text this article to your friends after reading this…
Today, 5 billion people send text messages.
Video Chat
While sign language is how most Deaf people communicate, we couldn’t use sign language wirelessly, until video chat technology was born.
Billions of dollars worth of business deals happen over video conference and billions of people use it to stay in touch with their loved ones.
Voice AI
The Deaf community realized we could use voice-to-text technology to take in place of no-show sign language interpreters and transcribe conversations in one-on-one and group meetings. Voice AI technology powers many communication apps downloaded by the Deaf community.
As you are reading this, Voice AI is taking over the world intertwining into smart speakers, shopping interfaces, voice assistants, dictation, and security in billions of applications today.
The other day I saw a quote that says: “Voice is the next computer mouse.”
Sign Language Recognition AI
The creation of sign language recognition technology was designed to help translate sign language to voice and vice versa at banks, airports, and tellers.
Now it is leveraged for mainstreamed image processing and gesture recognition technologies powering AR/VR applications and ventures worth billions of dollars.
Sound AI
Sound recognition technology was created to notify us of what sound is happening around us so Deaf people can live with peace of mind.
With this technology, Deaf and hard of hearing people now can see sound.
Today, many product manufacturers and service providers are integrating sound recognition technology to tap into sound data intelligence, monitoring, and tracking of vital events via sound.
Bottom Line
These examples of designing product features for a community have direct correlation to scalability and monetization with billions of users and devices.
It goes without saying that if you innovate a feature useful to Deaf and hard-of-hearing users, you can enjoy immense opportunities to serve billions of users.
A Deaf engineer recently stated at a Voice summit, “if you can design for me, you can design for anyone,” this statement says it all.
It’s well known as a curb cut effect in product design. This approach enhances product usefulness and experience for anyone.
Once a feature is validated useful to Deaf users, you somewhat qualify your product with greater flexibility and extensibility to scale into universal markets.
Quoting Jarrod Musano of Convo, one of the most influential Deaf-owned corporations, “the Deaf ecosystem is worth $3 billion” while it isn’t part of the typical news cycle, it’s still an insight that’s food for thought.
It’s a win-win situation, you could earn business in the existing $3 billion Deaf ecosystem and create new billion dollar markets.
Collaboration with the Community
You have the opportunities to reach the massive growth that captioning services, text messaging, video tech, and voice AI witnessed in the last few decades.
With the fourth industrial era approaching, there will be plenty of new market problems and frictions creating new needs and solutions.
You can start by collaborating with Deaf team members or agencies, you will learn everything you need from cultural and ableism perspectives.
My company, Wavio is Deaf owned and operated product innovation agency that can help you design and create the next cutting edge product that is 100% accessible to the Deaf masses for market growth.
Get in touch with Wavio to learn how to incorporate feature accessibility for 460 million of Deaf and Hard of Hearing people globally and grow your business.
Kick off with a Deaf-based agency and you are doing your cash flow sheets and social impact initiatives a favor.
Thank you for reading.
Feel free to send us a message: hey@wavio.ai
