Israeli’s Sign Now company in contact with FIFA World Cup 2022
This year Qatar will host the FIFA World Cup 2022. It will be from November 21 to December 18. It is possible that the World Cup will be accessible to the deaf community. There is an Israeli startup company named Sign Now. This company started in 2019 by working with the Eurovision Song Contest. Eurovision is like our “American Idol” or “The Voice” here in the USA. Sign Now worked with Eurovision to make their contest accessible for deaf viewers by providing sign language translators live online. Sign Now has been working hard to continue to make things accessible for deaf people online, especially those in Europe and Arabic countries.
Based on several articles, Sign Now is in contact with the managers of FIFA World Cup to provide sign language translators online for deaf people who come to watch the game and for deaf people who watch from afar. Sign Now has a free app that deaf people can download.
We reached out to Sign Now and we interviewed the International Deaf Community manager of the Sign Now who is a Deaf person herself, Hila Almog, to explain to us a little bit about the progress so far. I do want to explain that we are using International Sign to communicate with each other.
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Renca: I would like to ask you about Sign Now which is connected to the FIFA World Cup in Qatar- it is a huge sporting event- how was Sign Now able to connect with them for access?
Hila: Okay, well I am happy you have reached out to me. For a while here in Israel, Sign Now has been helping the Deaf community here with interpreters and we have been growing. It is our goal to reach out to Deaf people worldwide. There are so many Deaf people in this world that need help, especially with communication barriers. It increased during COVID-19 with masks, etc. So, my team and I were thinking of ways to make different places accessible which leads us to the FIFA World Cup. We thought that we could contact them to see if they would be willing to work with us to make things accessible for Deaf people. We will have to see in the next few months.
There are many things that are not accessible for Deaf people in the world. So, the FIFA World Cup in Qatar is one of them. We aim for that because we want to help Deaf Arabs. They cannot get interpreters in general. So, we thought, why don’t we start with the FIFA World Cup and see what happens? We will give support with Sign Now and see where that takes us with them.
We have to continue negotiating and communicating with the FIFA World Cup. We will see if they would be able to work with us to provide access. We still do not know for sure now. We are still in discussion with them.
Renca: Now, what do you want Deaf people to know about this, any comments?
Hila: Honestly, we are happy to help Deaf people in this world. I want to see equality among us. I want to see Deaf people have equal communication access as hearing people. I have seen inequality so many times. My family is Deaf. I have seen so many communication barriers that they went through. Now, for our generation, we cannot enable the same. We need to end that and have equal access to communication everywhere we go like workplaces, etc.
Thank you, Hila for your time. We are excited to see where this goes and we do hope that FIFA will agree to work with Sign Now to provide communication access for the Deaf community during the World Cup. You can find out more information about Sign Now through the link provided in this transcript.
Sign Now: https://www.signnow.co.il/
Article/videos for FIFA and Sign Now: https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/07/22/israeli-startup-to-make-2022-world-cup-deaf-accessible/
https://nocamels.com/2022/07/israeli-deaf-accessible-app-fifa/
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=414025050764811
Eurovision 2019: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/israeli-emissaries-use-sign-language-to-make-e