this is my sister Pauline and me I’m 10
years old and she’s two years younger
than me we live in Paris and as you may
know French people love to demonstrate
we would do this as family so here we
are very excited about this day we had
prepared signs that we would hold during
the March and some we’re actually bigger
than us that day thousands of people had
gathered and I remember myself sitting
up there watching fascinated the sea of
moving hands around me everywhere never
in my life had seen as many deaf people
we were there gathered as a community to
ask the governments to office early
recognize our language sign language my
first language my father my mother and
my sister are deaf not me I’m the only
one hearing person in my family and the
odds for this are lower than being
struck by lightning twice so I grew up
in a deaf world a silent world but it
was a warm and cozy cocoon I had a
wonderful childhood and my parents with
hearts of the deaf community and in the
deaf community everybody knew each other
we would go to their parties join deaf
trips play tennis at deaf clubs everyone
we would go we would see sign language
people would speak sign language
it was the glue that United our
community together into one single big
family in this family if you had a
remarkable trait you would be named
after that I remember
big-nose one a friend of my father he
was a deaf restaurant owner and chatty
mouth she was a chatterbox one of my mom
best best friend my name was Tebow she
shaking head he has my first letter of
my name and shaking head as a movement I
was doing when my mother would come for
me they named me
shaking head but the deaf community is
also something very direct people don’t
have pretensions if you didn’t like the
conversation you are in you could just
switch and look at another person I know
I know wouldn’t be awesome if we all if
we all speak sign language here all of
us unfortunately this is not the case
most of the time outside of the Deaf
world where I grew up in the hearing
world the world that you live in with
the two valid ears a world where no one
almost speak sign language and that was
usually because of that that most deaf
people had problems to interact with it
when I grew up I felt this weight all
the time I was the ambassador trying to
build the bridges between those two
worlds at age five I started my career
it all started with phone calls when the
phone rang a flight system of flashing
lights would trigger all across the room
and I would run and run to the phone and
answer my parents would come later
notified by the light and we would
interpret together at that time TV was
not captioned you couldn’t see any movie
if I wasn’t there next to the screen
interpreting for my parents
we watched Emily a lot I was I used to
accommodate them
out there in the world I used to help
them understand and communicate because
that was important we used to go in
museums post office banks or even doctor
I can tell you at the doctor there was
way too much information share to a kid
to handle
but it felt natural it felt normal
there was the right thing to do deaf and
hard of wing people need to read your
lips to understand why you say but
lip-reading only gets you to 25% of the
information so try to imagine somebody
talks to you you look at them in the
eyes and you get one word out of for
barely let’s say that you can manage to
fill the blanks and be smart about it
then I add a second and a third person
each son is the first person stops
talking the other person starts so you
miss the first words and you miss the
point
you miss the concept the jokes all the
time you get lost you in a constant
ping-pong match where the chances of you
keeping up decreased to zero very
quickly that was the day-to-day life for
them I remember my sister the first time
she got into a mainstream school with
other hearing kids she tried to keep up
and she tried so hard group
conversations were the worst for her but
that was where social life happened that
small hassle in a communication
difference between the human people and
her was enough to keep her outside of
their group he was like this wall of
silence was built between her and the
rest and seen from afar you couldn’t see
it why was there invisible so she
drifted away back to the Deaf world
where she had hundreds and hundreds of
friends he was easier for her you know
what was the point of struggling and
fighting just to get a handful of
hearing friends both of us knew that the
world was bigger than just the Deaf
world but we had to accept that I was
powerless she was powerless she was in
the de piel did cage because that was
the deaf world for her and I felt
powerless for years and for years until
four years ago when I met Andrew Gupta
in India and shoe four years old has
found
a social enterprise who helps poor
people get dignity through closes he
transforms valuable goods and valuable
clothes from the wealthy and make it
into valuable resources for the poor
people he’s not the first guy who
noticed there was poverty in India but
he did something about it
why him and not the others that’s what I
asked him and I what I asked him this
question he answered my question by
another question one that changed my
life
Tibo what makes you angry that’s why he
asked me Thibault what problem in your
life makes you so angry so frustrated
that you could devote the next ten years
of your life finding a solution to it I
was stunned I don’t get them your life
question like that all the time
anger this very violent behavior this
temporary loss of control what you do
things that afterwards you regret
immediately all happen to us but the
anger that drive and show is different
it’s much deeper it gave him energy and
purpose over the years it was the wheel
deal and when I asked myself what kind
of anger I had one Li one answer went
through the test of time at that time
the laws and the life of developing
people had improved a bit for
accessibility TV was now captioned with
subtitles phone when ou interpreted
through video interpreters but the
social dynamics was still the same those
two worlds had never been as far apart
the rest of the the world was going
together through English and
globalization all of this but the Deaf
and the hearing world still standed
separated by this big wall this big
silent wall and that was frustrating my
sister still had this endless series of
struggles she was now in college and she
had to rely on seven friends
just to combine together enough notes to
attend classes she would work three
times harder than anyone else
just to be at the normal baseline and
that was frustrating but that was not
just my deaf people at that Christmas
that year I had met my grandparents and
I knew this is something different was
with them they were starting losing
their hearing and because of that like
so many other people in the world they
couldn’t keep up with the conversation
anymore at Christmas dinners and I saw
in their eyes as a way son standing
still on the dinner table the same
frustration in the same isolation that
had grew up with it was not just deaf
people people above 75 years old are
more likely to be hard of hearing than
not if it’s not you who’s going to be
hard of hearing it’s your neighbor 400
million people 5% of the world
population today struggles because of
their discipline hearing loss every day
they go in business meetings family
dinners group conversations hang out
with friends and they cannot follow and
keep up they’re being denied a fully
rich and social professional life really
are we gonna just let this happen I felt
this anger going growing up in me
because the only solution they had today
was interpreters and captioners people
that you would pay $100 an hour just to
get the transcript of the conversation
but would you grab coffee with a friend
and pay $100 for this all the time would
you go on a date and have the third
person sitting next to you to the
conversation right sometimes can be
useful
[Laughter]
deaf people most of deaf and are fine
people were giving up on those
opportunities they were isolating
themselves from this social life and
that was what was making me the most
angry and when I connected to this anger
hearing and true that gave me the energy
I needed just to do the first step and
to start looking for a solution and
start moving forward he pushed me over
the next year’s I thought we could end
this isolation I was convinced of it now
the wall could be broken down we could
realize both of those worlds not just
the Deaf are hurting people you could
you can put the smartphone in your
pocket you see here this microphone you
use it for two things calling people and
Siri well if you use Siri Siri let’s
talk about it 40 years of technological
innovation all packed into a phone it’s
not artificial intelligence where you
can just talk to it and it transcribes
whatever you say but wait a minute why
do you use Siri for setting up alarms
dictating you text while you’re driving
really I thought artificial intelligence
helps cars drive themselves you could
detect cancer through photos of a nine
and what we were doing with speech
recognition sending out reminders really
can we not use this technology to help
millions of deaf American people what if
we would take the audio information of a
conversation and use it use this
artificial intelligence to make the
information visually accessible that’s
Ava Ava is an app that you can open on
your laptop or your phone it connects
all the smart phones in a room together
in a group conversation to hear what
each person has to say
and in essence second transcribes it in
color to the deaf person so they can
follow the conversation with you
it’s like captioning on TV but for real
conversations conversations that matter
we’ve built today the fastest captioning
system in the world so that my family my
co-founder deaf as well but millions of
deaf and hard of in people can follow
everyday conversations and feel included
one of them is Jenna Jenna wrote me a
letter describing me how Ava changed her
life she’s held Ava at church to finally
understand what the pastor was talking
about she’s held Ava in restaurants to
feel part of the banter between her
friends and the waiter
she used to miss this she held Ava at
the doctor’s office or during an
Americano in it in an her oatmeal at
Starbucks Gina is a massage therapist so
she has clients she would spend days in
silence now she is Ava with her clients
just to be able to transform this
silence into real conversations now she
G goes with them then I used to be
afraid of going out with friends at
nights for camping for example because
of the darkness she couldn’t read lips
she felt her entire life isolated with
Ava she had a companion in her pocket
and she could feel she belong again Gina
cried the first time she used a bow I
mean when’s the last time you’ve cried
using a nap
[Music]
how many other Gina’s are out there
ready to be held ready to discuss with
you so you can see their cultures and
share the stories last Thanksgiving
Ava connected thousands of families
together I felt in my heart I heard a
swear heard the first loud crack in this
wall of silence
it is a virtuous cycle each conversation
successful is one over silence and
isolation and it gives us more energy to
push further and bring further the
boundaries of accessibility so that we
can maybe one day bring closer a totally
accessible world I remember when I was
younger I felt so frustrated not to be
present for my family when they needed
me last week my sister met her professor
he was hearing she was deaf she used a
BA to communicate and I was millions of
miles away and finally I could be there
for her but she’s the real badass in a
story in a few years she will become the
first deaf lawyer in France sorry sister
sorry sister a lot of pressure no really
but think about it what brought us here
is the questions from angel what makes
you angry in your world what makes you
angry that you could spend the next 10
years of your life doing something about
it ask yourself this question let it
sink you may not have an answer to it
right away
you may feel uncomfortable dig deep
connect with maybe this anger amplify it
if you can find the fire within you know
that this is an incredible power and I
hope you can draw from it and I hope
that you can change the world with this
because the world needs you to do this
thang
[Applause]
years old and she’s two years younger
than me we live in Paris and as you may
know French people love to demonstrate
we would do this as family so here we
are very excited about this day we had
prepared signs that we would hold during
the March and some we’re actually bigger
than us that day thousands of people had
gathered and I remember myself sitting
up there watching fascinated the sea of
moving hands around me everywhere never
in my life had seen as many deaf people
we were there gathered as a community to
ask the governments to office early
recognize our language sign language my
first language my father my mother and
my sister are deaf not me I’m the only
one hearing person in my family and the
odds for this are lower than being
struck by lightning twice so I grew up
in a deaf world a silent world but it
was a warm and cozy cocoon I had a
wonderful childhood and my parents with
hearts of the deaf community and in the
deaf community everybody knew each other
we would go to their parties join deaf
trips play tennis at deaf clubs everyone
we would go we would see sign language
people would speak sign language
it was the glue that United our
community together into one single big
family in this family if you had a
remarkable trait you would be named
after that I remember
big-nose one a friend of my father he
was a deaf restaurant owner and chatty
mouth she was a chatterbox one of my mom
best best friend my name was Tebow she
shaking head he has my first letter of
my name and shaking head as a movement I
was doing when my mother would come for
me they named me
shaking head but the deaf community is
also something very direct people don’t
have pretensions if you didn’t like the
conversation you are in you could just
switch and look at another person I know
I know wouldn’t be awesome if we all if
we all speak sign language here all of
us unfortunately this is not the case
most of the time outside of the Deaf
world where I grew up in the hearing
world the world that you live in with
the two valid ears a world where no one
almost speak sign language and that was
usually because of that that most deaf
people had problems to interact with it
when I grew up I felt this weight all
the time I was the ambassador trying to
build the bridges between those two
worlds at age five I started my career
it all started with phone calls when the
phone rang a flight system of flashing
lights would trigger all across the room
and I would run and run to the phone and
answer my parents would come later
notified by the light and we would
interpret together at that time TV was
not captioned you couldn’t see any movie
if I wasn’t there next to the screen
interpreting for my parents
we watched Emily a lot I was I used to
accommodate them
out there in the world I used to help
them understand and communicate because
that was important we used to go in
museums post office banks or even doctor
I can tell you at the doctor there was
way too much information share to a kid
to handle
but it felt natural it felt normal
there was the right thing to do deaf and
hard of wing people need to read your
lips to understand why you say but
lip-reading only gets you to 25% of the
information so try to imagine somebody
talks to you you look at them in the
eyes and you get one word out of for
barely let’s say that you can manage to
fill the blanks and be smart about it
then I add a second and a third person
each son is the first person stops
talking the other person starts so you
miss the first words and you miss the
point
you miss the concept the jokes all the
time you get lost you in a constant
ping-pong match where the chances of you
keeping up decreased to zero very
quickly that was the day-to-day life for
them I remember my sister the first time
she got into a mainstream school with
other hearing kids she tried to keep up
and she tried so hard group
conversations were the worst for her but
that was where social life happened that
small hassle in a communication
difference between the human people and
her was enough to keep her outside of
their group he was like this wall of
silence was built between her and the
rest and seen from afar you couldn’t see
it why was there invisible so she
drifted away back to the Deaf world
where she had hundreds and hundreds of
friends he was easier for her you know
what was the point of struggling and
fighting just to get a handful of
hearing friends both of us knew that the
world was bigger than just the Deaf
world but we had to accept that I was
powerless she was powerless she was in
the de piel did cage because that was
the deaf world for her and I felt
powerless for years and for years until
four years ago when I met Andrew Gupta
in India and shoe four years old has
found
a social enterprise who helps poor
people get dignity through closes he
transforms valuable goods and valuable
clothes from the wealthy and make it
into valuable resources for the poor
people he’s not the first guy who
noticed there was poverty in India but
he did something about it
why him and not the others that’s what I
asked him and I what I asked him this
question he answered my question by
another question one that changed my
life
Tibo what makes you angry that’s why he
asked me Thibault what problem in your
life makes you so angry so frustrated
that you could devote the next ten years
of your life finding a solution to it I
was stunned I don’t get them your life
question like that all the time
anger this very violent behavior this
temporary loss of control what you do
things that afterwards you regret
immediately all happen to us but the
anger that drive and show is different
it’s much deeper it gave him energy and
purpose over the years it was the wheel
deal and when I asked myself what kind
of anger I had one Li one answer went
through the test of time at that time
the laws and the life of developing
people had improved a bit for
accessibility TV was now captioned with
subtitles phone when ou interpreted
through video interpreters but the
social dynamics was still the same those
two worlds had never been as far apart
the rest of the the world was going
together through English and
globalization all of this but the Deaf
and the hearing world still standed
separated by this big wall this big
silent wall and that was frustrating my
sister still had this endless series of
struggles she was now in college and she
had to rely on seven friends
just to combine together enough notes to
attend classes she would work three
times harder than anyone else
just to be at the normal baseline and
that was frustrating but that was not
just my deaf people at that Christmas
that year I had met my grandparents and
I knew this is something different was
with them they were starting losing
their hearing and because of that like
so many other people in the world they
couldn’t keep up with the conversation
anymore at Christmas dinners and I saw
in their eyes as a way son standing
still on the dinner table the same
frustration in the same isolation that
had grew up with it was not just deaf
people people above 75 years old are
more likely to be hard of hearing than
not if it’s not you who’s going to be
hard of hearing it’s your neighbor 400
million people 5% of the world
population today struggles because of
their discipline hearing loss every day
they go in business meetings family
dinners group conversations hang out
with friends and they cannot follow and
keep up they’re being denied a fully
rich and social professional life really
are we gonna just let this happen I felt
this anger going growing up in me
because the only solution they had today
was interpreters and captioners people
that you would pay $100 an hour just to
get the transcript of the conversation
but would you grab coffee with a friend
and pay $100 for this all the time would
you go on a date and have the third
person sitting next to you to the
conversation right sometimes can be
useful
[Laughter]
deaf people most of deaf and are fine
people were giving up on those
opportunities they were isolating
themselves from this social life and
that was what was making me the most
angry and when I connected to this anger
hearing and true that gave me the energy
I needed just to do the first step and
to start looking for a solution and
start moving forward he pushed me over
the next year’s I thought we could end
this isolation I was convinced of it now
the wall could be broken down we could
realize both of those worlds not just
the Deaf are hurting people you could
you can put the smartphone in your
pocket you see here this microphone you
use it for two things calling people and
Siri well if you use Siri Siri let’s
talk about it 40 years of technological
innovation all packed into a phone it’s
not artificial intelligence where you
can just talk to it and it transcribes
whatever you say but wait a minute why
do you use Siri for setting up alarms
dictating you text while you’re driving
really I thought artificial intelligence
helps cars drive themselves you could
detect cancer through photos of a nine
and what we were doing with speech
recognition sending out reminders really
can we not use this technology to help
millions of deaf American people what if
we would take the audio information of a
conversation and use it use this
artificial intelligence to make the
information visually accessible that’s
Ava Ava is an app that you can open on
your laptop or your phone it connects
all the smart phones in a room together
in a group conversation to hear what
each person has to say
and in essence second transcribes it in
color to the deaf person so they can
follow the conversation with you
it’s like captioning on TV but for real
conversations conversations that matter
we’ve built today the fastest captioning
system in the world so that my family my
co-founder deaf as well but millions of
deaf and hard of in people can follow
everyday conversations and feel included
one of them is Jenna Jenna wrote me a
letter describing me how Ava changed her
life she’s held Ava at church to finally
understand what the pastor was talking
about she’s held Ava in restaurants to
feel part of the banter between her
friends and the waiter
she used to miss this she held Ava at
the doctor’s office or during an
Americano in it in an her oatmeal at
Starbucks Gina is a massage therapist so
she has clients she would spend days in
silence now she is Ava with her clients
just to be able to transform this
silence into real conversations now she
G goes with them then I used to be
afraid of going out with friends at
nights for camping for example because
of the darkness she couldn’t read lips
she felt her entire life isolated with
Ava she had a companion in her pocket
and she could feel she belong again Gina
cried the first time she used a bow I
mean when’s the last time you’ve cried
using a nap
[Music]
how many other Gina’s are out there
ready to be held ready to discuss with
you so you can see their cultures and
share the stories last Thanksgiving
Ava connected thousands of families
together I felt in my heart I heard a
swear heard the first loud crack in this
wall of silence
it is a virtuous cycle each conversation
successful is one over silence and
isolation and it gives us more energy to
push further and bring further the
boundaries of accessibility so that we
can maybe one day bring closer a totally
accessible world I remember when I was
younger I felt so frustrated not to be
present for my family when they needed
me last week my sister met her professor
he was hearing she was deaf she used a
BA to communicate and I was millions of
miles away and finally I could be there
for her but she’s the real badass in a
story in a few years she will become the
first deaf lawyer in France sorry sister
sorry sister a lot of pressure no really
but think about it what brought us here
is the questions from angel what makes
you angry in your world what makes you
angry that you could spend the next 10
years of your life doing something about
it ask yourself this question let it
sink you may not have an answer to it
right away
you may feel uncomfortable dig deep
connect with maybe this anger amplify it
if you can find the fire within you know
that this is an incredible power and I
hope you can draw from it and I hope
that you can change the world with this
because the world needs you to do this
thang
[Applause]
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