Speak2Sign, a project from Huge and Ink & Salt, brings American Sign Language to D.C.’s Union Market.

Union Market is one of Washington, D.C.’s top eating destinations — the sort of large indoor market with vendors serving up everything from Korean tacos and dosas to gelato and fancy coffee. Now, the food hall is offering something beyond culinary fare: New interactive kiosks teaching customers how to place an order in American Sign Language (ASL).

Since the market is just down the street from Gallaudet University, one of the world’s only universities for the deaf and hard of hearing, many employees and customers at Union Market are deaf or hard of hearing and rely on lip reading or pointing at written menus to complete orders. So Huge, whose D.C. office is located near both Union Market and Gallaudet, partnered with tech consultancy Ink & Salt to create the Speak2Sign app, which teaches non-signing Union Market customers and employees basic American Sign Language. Using the app, hearing customers can learn how to order dishes in ASL at nearby vendors.

The initiative grew out of a winning proposal at a recent Huge Change hackathon, in which the agency’s offices submit ideas for products that will create meaningful social change, and then quickly work with partners to create working prototypes. Last year’s winner was Notifica, an app made in collaboration with United We Dream that lets undocumented immigrants notify select contacts that they’ve been swept up in a raid. That app took home two Silver Lions at Cannes this year.

While Notifica is designed primarily for communicating with close friends and family, Speak2Sign makes it easier for the non-ASL-speaking public to communicate with ASL speakers.

Users can receive Ink & Salt’s ASL App by entering their phone number.

According to Jenny Madorsky, a senior project manager at Huge’s D.C. office who worked on Speak2Sign, a big part of the inspiration came from a crucial part of Huge’s daily routine: lunch. “Many of us go to Union Market every day, and we see a lot of people speaking in sign language,” she says. “For those of us who don’t speak sign language, we wanted to find a way to learn a little bit while we’re here, participate in the community, and close the communications gap.”

For Ink & Salt, this goes hand in hand with its goal of using smartphones and tablets as sign-language communications tools. “We can look at Speak2Sign as a customized signbank tailor-made to fit a specific industry or place of employment,” says Ink & Salt’s co-founder and lead project manager, Matt Malzkuhn. A signbank is roughly similar to a dictionary for a sign language and contains photos and video footage illustrating various signs.

Speak2Sign may be hyperlocal and inside one food hall for now, but Ink & Salt is looking at other ways to further bridge the divide between hearing and non-hearing people, including apps for other signed languages.

“There are deaf-owned business and deaf-based service companies all over the world who could benefit from this technology,” Malzkuhn says.

Speak2Sign is installed on tablets at several kiosks located throughout Union Market. Diners click on an item they want — such as an espresso or a taco — and Speak2Sign shows how to place the order in ASL. Users then have the option of downloading another Ink & Salt app directly to their phone, the ASL App, to learn more than 1,500 basic conversational signs.

Because of the high number of deaf employees and customers at Union Market, the food hall is the perfect place to take the app for a test spin. Instead of pointing to menu items or relying on employees to lip read — which not all deaf people can do — hearing customers can learn a bit of ASL and get some tasty food in the process. Employees at restaurants can also brush up on food-related ASL terms with the app, making it easier to communicate with their deaf coworkers.

As the Speak2Sign tablets made their way from the hackathon to the wild, the team made a number of refinements after talking with vendors. For instance, originally the tablets were intended for placement at the point of sale, but doing so disrupted the busy lunchtime crush.The best option turned out to be relocating the tablets to kiosks located near participating vendors. And although the first iteration of the app used voice recognition, it turns out voice recognition isn’t the perfect use case for a loud open-plan market with dozens of conversations happening simultaneously, so a touch-screen interface will be used instead.

Last week, Speak2Sign kiosks were installed near a couple Union Market vendors, including Peregrine Espresso and TaKorean; Trickling Springs and Salt & Sundry will get theirs soon. Being able to order espresso and Korean tacos impacts the culture of a food hall that’s local to Gallaudet. “Obviously, we have a huge, rich community of deaf people right next door, and that’s a big part of what Union Market is,” TaKorean founder and CEO Mike Lenard said at a recent event at the market. “We also have a lot of customers who are tourists and from the suburbs. When they come into this community, they should be aware of who is in this community.”

Keep an eye out for Speak2Sign kiosks at Union Market, and remember: Ordering a delicious meal is even better when you order it in a new language, as the over 750 people who have already used Speak2Sign kiosks have found out.

The most popular words people look up in Speak2Sign? “Coffee” and “beer.”

Magenta is a publication of Huge.