Skip to content

Radical honesty

Our honest limits

Most translation products hide what they can't do. We publish it. This page is the exact, current capability of SimuSign — the numbers, the gaps, and the public quality gates we have to pass before we call this "access."

Census as of July 2026

The numbers

The capability census

Every figure below is computed from the shipped product's own data — it cannot drift from reality.

320

English words & phrases our translator maps

Everything else routes to fingerspelling — visibly, never silently.

153

Signs hand-authored on the avatar

Each individually authored and regression-tested: handshape, movement, and facial channels.

3

Grammar markers rendered on the face

WH-questions, yes/no questions, and negation — brows, head tilt/shake, and gaze, scoped per clause.

0 / 153

Signs independently Deaf-reviewed so far

The honest number today. Our Deaf-review badge program is on the roadmap, and this page will track it.

Why you'll see a lot of spelling

With 153 authored signs, most everyday sentences contain words we can't sign yet — so the avatar fingerspells them, letter by letter, with the camera zooming in so you can read along. That's deliberate. The alternative — silently dropping words or swapping in a wrong sign — is how translation tools lose the trust of the people they claim to serve. When we can't sign it, you'll see us spell it.

The line we hold

What we will not build

SimuSign is not an interpreter and never will be marketed as one. Medical, legal, employment, and emergency communication require qualified human interpreters — that is both the law in most of those settings and the clear position of Deaf advocacy organizations worldwide, including the World Federation of the Deaf and WASLI. We agree with it.

Our live streaming mode is an honestly-labeled access preview: real technology, real limits, shown as-is so you can judge it — not a substitute for human interpretation anywhere the stakes matter.

Watch us climb

The public quality ladder

Before we describe any part of SimuSign as access — rather than learning or preview — all five of these gates must pass. All five are currently open.

G1

Motion naturalness

open

Sign transitions, holds, and timing judged acceptable by Deaf reviewers in blind panels — not by us.

G2

Mouth morphemes

open

The facial channel research identifies as the biggest comprehension gap in signing avatars. Not built yet.

G3

1,000-sign vocabulary

open

Authored at the same per-sign quality bar — we will not scrape or bulk-generate signs to inflate the count.

G4

Named Deaf advisors

open

A paid review program with credited Deaf reviewers, whose approvals become per-sign badges in the product.

G5

A real deployment partner

open

A venue or employer running Deaf-reviewed content in production, with outcomes we can publish.

Help us get this right

If you're a fluent Deaf signer, we want to pay you to tell us what's wrong with our signing. If you spot an error anywhere in the product, we want to know. Reach us through — we read everything.