inspiring

Subtitles and closed captions make it possible for deaf people to enjoy films and television shows—but what about little kids who can't read yet, or whose reading isn't fast enough to keep up with the captions? How does a deaf child fully appreciate a children's movie if they can't understand what any of the characters are saying and can't read the captions?

Mariella Satow ran into that question when she was teaching herself American Sign Language.

According to the BBC, 17-year-old Satow wanted to watch TV shows with sign language interpretation to help her learn ASL, but found very few that included signing. At first, that was the problem she wanted to solve, but as she learned more about deaf children, she realized an app that included sign language interpretation for kids' movies could also fill a gap in the deaf community.

"Me and my sister were avid movie watchers when we were younger, and I couldn't imagine that not being a part of our childhood," she told BBC's Newsbeat.

Satow has dual citizenship in the U.S. and the U.K. and had been attending high school in England, but when she got stuck in New York during the summer of 2020 due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, she used the pandemic downtime—and her $3000 savings from dog walking—to create an app. It took her a year to develop the technology, and with the help of the deaf community and ASL teachers, the SignUp app was born.