Samsung Releases Powerful Ad For App That Helps Deaf-Blind People Communicate
Samsung’s new “Good Vibes” app allows the deafblind to communicate with their loved ones through Morse Code
Samsung India has created a revolutionary new app that allows the deafblind (a person who is both hearing and sight-impaired) to communicate with their sighted and hearing loved ones by translating Morse Code into text or voice. The app itself is a game-changer, but it’s the commercial that is changing people’s hearts.
In the powerful ad, a deafblind girl struggles to communicate with her parents. She is angry and frustrated and her parents are powerless to help. The parents eventually enroll their daughter in a school for the deafblind where she learns Morse Code, but still, her mom struggles to communicate as she does not fully comprehend Morse Code herself. One fateful day, someone hands the girl a phone with a special app that translates her Morse Code message into a text that her mother can read. Through Morse Code, the girl texts her mother, “Mom, I miss you,” and her mom texts back “I love you,” which is relayed to the daughter through a series of vibrations. Finally, mother and daughter can communicate.
This moving commercial about a cell phone has turned the world into a puddle of happy tears.
According to Samsung, “Good Vibes is a two-way communication app that allows the deafblind to send and receive messages with friends, family or anybody else through their smartphones. It translates Morse Code input into text or voice and vice versa.”
A deafblind person sends a text by “tapping on the screen using Morse Code — where all letters of the English alphabet are combinations of dots and dashes. The letters can be input as short tap for a dot and long press for a dash. Likewise, incoming messages can be understood as vibrations by the deafblind, where small vibration means a dot and long vibration means a dash.”
The app was developed by Samsung India in association with Sense International India, and although some early reviews of the app claim that it’s not yet available in the states, hopefully, it’ll be available worldwide soon. Over the years, many developers have attempted to create an app that allows the deafblind to communicate with sighted and hearing persons, though nothing has taken off, stood the test of time, or been as user-friendly as Samsung Good Vibes appears to be.
Even though the app isn’t readily available, it’s the moving advertisement that serves as a beautiful reminder to us sighted and hearing folks that we shouldn’t take those two senses for granted.
“As a momma with a son who is visually impaired…this got me hard,” one woman shared on Facebook. “This is absolutely what this world needs more of! Coming out and making things more accessible for our loves with these conditions!”
We love to hear about cellular technological advances that aren’t just bigger phones or better cameras. This is the stuff that changes lives.
