Josh Staub created the app as a labor of love alongside Deaf animators, engineers, and other collaborators.
“[The app] helps hearing and Deaf of all ages learn the rich and expressive ASL language in an innovative and engaging way like only animation can,” the Small Talk website states. Because Oscar is fully animated as he signs and fingerspells, users can rotate him to view his signs from different angles, making it easier to see how his hands and fingers move. They can also adjust the playback speed—slowing it down as they learn or speeding it up to test their fluency and handshape recognition. Crucially, they can experience Oscar’s larger-than-life facial expressions (unsurprisingly reminiscent of Disney and Pixar characters), which are an essential part of communication in ASL. [...] Staub doesn’t really view other ASL learning apps as competition. He sees Small Talk ASL as just another tool in the world—admittedly a pretty fun one—to help more people learn ASL and overcome barriers to human communication. “There are 48 million Deaf and hard-of-hearing people in America, yet the… community is, in many ways, an isolated community. There is a hidden barrier which impedes a hearing person and a deaf person from building deep relationships. ASL overcomes that barrier,” the website states. It adds that about 70% of parents of deaf children don’t learn ASL.
