At last years annual Nokia Developer Summit held in London, the winners of the global Calling All Innovators contest and the finalists in the Growth Economy Venture Challenge for 2010 were announced at an award ceremony on the 15th of September. One of the winners of the contest, was a South African based company called AppCRAFT founded and launched in 2009 by a good friend of mine – Simon Botes, who won the first prize in the ‘Life Improvement’ catergory with his Symbian app – eLiteracy, which features fun educational games for both young and old and aids in teaching early literacy in communities around the world.
In less than 18 months AppCRAFT, which is based in Plettenberg Bay, South Africa, has risen from the African soil taking top development awards both locally and internationally and has seen over 75,000 downloads in over 178 countries in ovi store with their various apps.
Today I would like to share with you one of their latest apps to hit Nokia Ovi Store – eSign for S60V5 and Symbian^3 touch screen devices, an easy to use Symbian app that will help both the hearing and non hearing Nokia users learn the Sign Language Alphabet.
Sure, you might be thinking – ok just another app for my mobile device, why do I need it?? Well fair enough, let me share with you some stats, did you know that in only 3 of the 190 countries supported by The Nokia Ovi Store, there are more than 20 million people living with a hearing disability. South Africa has more than 1.5million deaf citizens, in the USA the number is closer to 9million and in the UK it’s around 8.9million. With such a high number of deaf people globally, surely there should be an easier way for regular hearing folk to learn even the most basic of Sign Language to help narrow the gap in communication between the hearing and the deaf, right?? Well this is one of those ways.
eSign is built on top of their award winning eLiteracy framework and contains fun flash card style educational games for the whole family. The aim of this new guide is to make learning the sign language alphabet more fun and interactive. As with all languages, starting with the ABC’s is best.
Exclusive to Nokia Ovi Store – eSign is free to download for a limited time period only and currently available in three different versions: American, Canadian and South African Sign language.
Other languages and features to be added in upcoming updates. Don’t worry – you folk in the UK, Simon tells me that the UK version is on top of the list and should be available soon. There are over 51 major sign languages spoken on our planet and AppCRAFT plan to support them in the near future.
The app is a working progress and there is a small audio issue with the N8 which is being worked on and should be ironed out in the next version. If you do encounter other bugs or even have any suggestions or features that you would like to see in this app, Simon would like to hear from you – all you have to do is fill out the Feedback form here.
So what are you waiting for – remember that the app is only free for a limited period. The first 50 people to download eSign and send Simon their feedback on the app, will receive a copy of the award winning eLiteracy app, currently valued at € 7.00 on the Nokia Ovi Store – totally FREE.
Here are the download links for eSign:
1. American Sign Language
2. Canadian Sign Language
3. South African Sign Language
For other great apps from AppCRAFT, follow this link to the Nokia Ovi Store: http://store.ovi.com/publisher/AppCRAFT/
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