Armenian girls team stuns Google experts with sign language app (video)

 August 12, 2017 - 14:09 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - An Armenian team of young women was selected among the finalists and won the People's Choice Award in a months-long app-building competition, The Technovation Challenge, organized by Google at the company’s campus.

More than 11,000 girls from 103 countries formed teams to address issues in several categories: peace, poverty, environment, equality, education, and health. This week, the finalists traveled to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View to pitch their ideas to a panel of tech leaders and other experts.

The Armenian team was comprised of Aghavni Hakobyan, Sona Avetisyan, Svetlana Davtyan, Violeta Mkrtchyan, with Vardanush Hovhannisyan as their mentor, Google said in a blog post.

When a deaf classmate visited their school, the team of five girls from the village of Karbi, Aragatsotn village, came up with the idea for an app -- aptly called Armenian Sign Language -- to help people learn Armenian sign language using videos of sign gestures. Armenian Sign Language was developed to help connect those with poor hearing and those with good hearing. The app is suitable for English and Armenian speakers of all ages.

Four girls from Kazakhstan behind a safety app called QamCare were crowned the winner of the Senior Division and will receive $15,000.

Armenia, other finalists Kenya and India will receive $10,000 each.