Ecuadorian finalist of the Microsoft´s YouthSpark program

(Source: El Universo)

Shirley Martinez is one of the finalists of the Challenge for Change contest, organized by Microsoft with her project “Don’t stop talking.” The goal of Don´t Stop Talking is to allow people with hearing disabilities to continue their daily life while still talking, because the system uses facial recognition and this will help to visualize correctly the gestures of different phonemes, regardless of the spoken language.

Martinez is an engineering student at ESPOCH and is the first Ecuadorian competing as a finalist of the YouthSpark program of Microsoft, which seeks that young people use technology to benefit society.

“Having the participation of Shirley this year as our representative in the YouthSpark program makes us feel that our message is reaching the youth. Technology is a very versatile tool to develop great ideas, it gives us pleasure that Microsoft programs are used to achieve these objectives. The challenge Shirley has set out makes us admire her, especially the social assistance end of improving the communication of people with hearing impairment,” says Juan Carlos Cisneros, manager of Microsoft Ecuador.