Communication
for Everyone
About Ishaara
Our mission is to make Indian Sign Language part of everyday communication, helping messages move between ISL and written or spoken language.
Ishaara began with Sign2Text, our experimental work in camera-based sign recognition. Today, our main focus is Text2Sign: bringing written and spoken messages to life through Indian Sign Language animations performed by a digital avatar. Both are part of our journey toward more accessible, two-way communication.
Indian Sign Language is a rich visual language, but much of the information people encounter every day is shared only through speech or text. We started Ishaara to explore how technology could reduce that communication gap. As we learned more, our goal grew from recognizing signs to helping communication work in both directions.
mission,
bigger
impact
Our first step was Sign2Text. We collected and annotated around 35,000 images from different angles, then augmented the data to explore camera-based recognition of ISL signs. The result is a prototype that processes signs in the browser without specialized hardware. It has limited sign coverage and remains an experiment, but it gave us a foundation for what came next.
That work led us to Text2Sign, now Ishaara's main focus. It presents written and spoken messages through ISL animations using a digital avatar. We are expanding the available signs and phrases and refining how they flow together. Our interactive demo shows the current experience, while feedback from early access will help us decide what to improve next.
two-way
communication
Who Built Ishaara?
Ishaara was developed by Rehan Sayyed, Vivek Chouhan, Nishikant Raut, and Rohit Deshmukh. We began by exploring sign recognition and are now focused on Text2Sign. What connects both efforts is our shared goal: making Indian Sign Language communication easier to access in everyday life.
Same goal. →