Building bridges between hearing people and people with hearing loss

Roland Horváth is a young coder from Hungary who was the runner-up in the 2017 pan-European Future Makers Awards competition (14-17 years old category ). He developed an app that aims to build bridges between hearing people and people with hearing loss.

Roland, your project is very impressive – how did you come up with the idea?

I first heard about sign language at a LEGO programing contest and I was surprised to learn how little my generation knew about the challenges of people with hearing loss, although a staggering 360 million people (5% of the world’s population) are currently facing these challenges according to the World Health Organization . I made the connection immediately: I cannot help them speak but I can teach others how to use sign language. This is how my app, Mutasd! (“Show Me!”) was born, as a way to open a new world of possibilities where everyone can more easily communicate with each other.

What do you enjoy most when it comes to coding / developing a project?

I enjoyed every stage of this project – the research, the coding, the learning, the trial and error, but most of all I enjoyed seeing the enthusiastic feedback from people whenever I presented my project and seeing my idea transform into a working app. I taught myself how to code, using online tutorials and courses and followed programing forums. Though the app still requires some refinement when I finalize it I hope to see it on many young people’s smartphones and tablets.

What advice would you give to young people your age?

I would recommend that every young person takes a moment to notice what are the challenges their community faces and come up with ideas on how to solve them – use your skills to create a positive impact around you!

Liberty Global launched the pan-European Future Makers Awards in partnership with CoderDojo during the 2017 Europe Code Week, aiming to stimulate young people to use their coding superpowers to come up with projects that could solve social issues in their communities.