AI Innovation brings new opportunities for the Deaf community
A new technology with the potential to improve accessibility for the hard-of-hearing
Balancing himself with a cane, Dylan Burns walks into a cafe on St. Denis St. in Montreal, arriving 15 minutes early to our meeting.
His wide but slightly nervous smile lights up his face under his beard as he steps inside. He extends a firm handshake, then approaches the barista, a friend of his, to order a coffee.
Just a year earlier, Burns, 38, fell on the sidewalk outside the Dollarama just down the block from this cafe. It happened due to a seizure—he broke both bones in his ears, immediately losing his hearing and much of his sense of balance.
“The actual immediate loss of hearing was such a surprise,” Burns says.“It happened in a matter of minutes. I wasn’t expecting it.”
He explains how, after hitting his head, he couldn’t even hear himself speak, relying instead on text-based communication with doctors for weeks.
The sudden and dramatic change in Burns's life forced him to make enormous adjustments. Formerly a chef, he had to leave the industry, fearing that he could pose a risk to himself and those around him in a busy kitchen without his hearing or balance.
While Burns had to adapt after unexpectedly losing his hearing in middle age, others have navigated without hearing their whole lives.
Nikki Agro was born with moderate-severe bilateral hearing loss but can lip read. She grew up communicating orally in a hearing family, learning American Sign Language (ASL) after joining the Deaf community at age 10.
“Even though I sign, I learned that I pass off as hearing because I can speak without a Deaf accent or translator, which can be somewhat of a challenge when requesting accommodations,” she says with frustration. For Agro, this duality complicates her experience advocating for tools that meet her needs.
In school, Agro often had to push back against dismissive attitudes. She recalls being met with excuses like, “Your grades are too high to need accommodations,” or, “Our budget can’t afford that service for just one person.” Agro said her teacher once told her, “I worked with a hard-of-hearing person before, and they didn’t need that.” Reflecting on the experience, Agro said “You have to be your own self-advocate… something I would have to use no matter where I went.”
Lack of access to the accommodations that Agro needed affected her work and everyday life in Montreal.
Many in the deaf community experience these challenges, but startup company Deaf AI is currently researching new technology that addresses these challenges.
This technology is designed to provide real-time sign language interpretation in airports and other transportation hubs, making it easier for passengers to access important information such as boarding or gate announcements. The technology will be making its first real-time launch in 2025 at the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, where it will display ASL and transcribe messages about delays, gate changes and boarding announcements on screens.
For people who face daily communication challenges, such innovations are vital. After the instantaneous hearing loss, Burns started taking sign language classes to connect with the deaf community. He also underwent cochlear implant surgery to assist in his interactions with family and close friends, none of whom knew sign language.
A cochlear implant is a device designed to assist individuals with severe hearing loss by bypassing damaged parts of the ear and directly stimulating the cochlear nerve, which carries sound signals to the brain.
Burns wears a white implant that stands out against his thick black hair and beard. He says it’s intentional, serving as a reminder for the hearing community that “Deaf people exist.”
He says that he feels conflicted about cochlear implants.
“Within the Deaf community, [implants] imply that being deaf makes you broken,” Burns says. He explains that, due to the suddenness of his hearing loss, he had no choice but to undergo the procedure, as it was the only way for him to communicate effectively.
However, while Burns says the implants helped with communication, he admits that they have their drawbacks.
“They just serve to underline the loss of my hearing instead of comforting me,” Burns says.
For Burns and many others, navigating public spaces and accessing essential services presents daily challenges. Communication barriers can make routine tasks difficult, particularly in noisy or fast-paced environments like public transit or airports.
Burns explains that cochlear implants can sometimes make navigation more challenging. The change in processing mechanisms requires the brain to adjust to a new perception, which is limited by external conditions and requires constant user adaptation.
“You just have to do everything by sight,” Burns says.
This is where Deaf AI bridges the gap. In real-time use, the artificial intelligence (AI) adapts based on the context of announcements, ensuring that airport information is represented accurately through signs to avoid confusion. Deaf AI’s approach is to create hyper-realistic avatars that capture the "natural movement of the hands and fingers," allowing these on-screen translations to closely resemble a human interpreter’s expressive range.
"Sometimes you're talking about Apple as a tech company, sometimes you are talking about Apple as a fruit [...]. Sign for all of these would be different," explains Mehdi Masoumi, Deaf AI’s founder and CEO.
Masoumi's inspiration to develop technology to help deaf individuals began with his experiences helping his cousin in Iran, who worked with deaf students. This early exposure fuelled his interest in using technology to support accessibility, especially as he observed the challenges interpreters faced during COVID-19 press briefings.
"Let's use AI to see how we can develop more accessibility, not just for emergency situations,” Masoumi says.
He began connecting with accessibility-focused organizations and tech experts. For him, this networking highlighted the complexity of sign language interpretation. Masoumi noticed significant limitations of AI in handling sign languages, mainly due to limited data availability and the nuanced, conceptual nature of signs.
"You cannot attach, for example, a dictionary and find every single English word, then find an equal one in ASL and attach all of them. It’s conceptual," he says.
By developing AI-powered tools for real-time sign language interpretation, Deaf AI is working to make service announcements accessible for deaf individuals, enabling more independence with their surroundings.
Agro was happy to learn about the new developments in the AI space for Deaf representation.
“[This will] certainly help to understand gate change announcements made over the speakers,” Agro says. She notes that many public places, like hospitals and airports, don’t have interpreters on-site.
“[They] leave it to Deaf folks to have to arrange that kind of service on their own,” she says.
It’s a sentiment that Burns agrees with.
“If nothing else, [this technology] creates visibility for the hearing community to see those messages,” Burns says.
Instead of requiring new equipment, Deaf AI’s technology works with existing infrastructure.
"We can use whatever they have right now [...] current infrastructure is good for us to implement this technology," Masoumi says. “One of the major challenges for us is integration.”
While the initial rollout focuses on transit, the startup aims to expand into other public domains, including education, banking and even gaming, where communication access remains a significant barrier.
However, each of these areas holds unique challenges and possibilities. Deaf AI is positioning itself to address them individually by tailoring its technology to meet the needs of the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community.
As the tech company awaits its launch, Masoumi says with continued commitment to improving accessibility, “Step by step, we are receiving more positive feedback from people.”
