Just imagine that you would be unable to perform common tasks like buying a candy in a convenience store or talk with your doctor about the health problems that you have. Well, this is the reality for nearly 360 million people around the world, who suffer some type of hearing loss or speech disorder, 328 million are adults and 32 million are kids, and this represents the 5% of the world population (World Health Organization). In Ecuador, there are near 400,000 individuals who suffer from a type of hearing impairment and speech disorders. The budget of the government for dealing with this problem, since 2012 has increased in 100 million dollars (INEC). Nonetheless, even with this amount of investment, the social programs created by the government have just reached around 50,000 individuals with hearing loss and have not been able to give these individuals the opportunity to perform without limitations in society.
VELAS - Versatile Language Systems - is a group of engineers, scientists, and medicine students that is seeking for new solutions to improve the quality of life for individuals with hearing loss and speech disorders. We want to change this reality and give these individuals a tool that will allow them to overcome all of their limitations and let them fully develop in society. We proposed this problematic at the MIT Hack Medicine in Quito, Ecuador, were the project: Morse Globe for Special Needs – Morcis was awarded the first place of the hackathon
MORCIS Prototype 1.0
Morcis will be a low cost accessory and personal assistant for people with hearing loss and speech disorders. It will use Morse Code to allow individuals to be able to communicate in real time with anyone, in any language they want. This will improve their current solutions, like sign language, which differs from one region to another. One of the objectives of this tool is to allow people to access to a better education in schools, and even universities, which will help them to get better jobs and thus a better quality of life. With the glove, the individual who suffers hearing impairment or speech disorders can communicate and understand what a hearing person is saying. The use of Morse code with the fingers can enhance the language capabilities of an individual who has hearing impairment and speech disorders.