A small app with a loud purpose.
The gap between hearing and Deaf conversations is closed every day by people, and those people get tired. Interpreters cost money. Family members get pulled into doctor visits. Friends learn three signs and stop. The fluent middle is missing.
Phones are everywhere though. They have cameras that can see your hands. They have chips that can run real models. The question we asked was simple. Can a modern phone, looking through its own camera, do useful sign translation in real time, on device, without sending video anywhere?
After two years of stubborn iteration, the answer is yes. Not in every scene, not perfectly. But in everyday rooms with everyday people, at conversation speed, with the model running entirely on the phone, it works.
Four things that don't bend.
On device, always
Translation happens entirely on the phone. The camera feed never leaves your device. We did the hard engineering work so privacy is the default, not a setting.
Built with the community
Every signing pattern in the model came from Deaf collaborators who chose to be part of the build, not from scraped video. We pay for time, and the data stays with the people who created it.
Honest about limits
Gestura is good in everyday rooms with everyday people. It is not a replacement for a qualified interpreter in court, hospital, or any high-stakes setting. We say so out loud.
Slow when it has to be
We would rather ship one sign language that actually works than five that almost do. Croatian first, Slovenian and Austrian next, and only when they pass community review.
Built by Marin, in the open.
Gestura is a one-person studio, working with three Deaf collaborators on a long contract, a part-time accessibility reviewer, and a small group of beta testers who get the build early and complain about it loudly. That is the team.
We post real notes from the build in News . You can reach us at hello@gestura.app. A human replies within a day.
- 2024First on-device prototype on iPhone.
- 2025Closed-data partnership with Croatian signing community.
- 2026Beta cohorts, then iOS public launch in spring.