A Deptford inventor has won an award for her smart glove that can translate sign language into speech.

Hadeel Ayoub was working as a PhD student at Goldsmiths when she came up with the ingenious invention.

Dubbed BrightSign, it consists of five sensors that sense when your fingers flex and an accelerometer which can detect the orientation of the hand.

All this information is then fed into a battery-powered computer which translate the signs and print out the results on a screen and via a speaker.

It also has machine learning, which means it can learn new and custom signs and build up its own virtual sign language library.

Her invention landed her the women entrepreneurs in health tech category winner of the AXA Health Tech and You awards.

Speaking about her invention, Hadeel, who is originally from Saudi Arabia, said: “What it does is it translates sign language to text into speech in real time to allow people with speech disabilities to communicate with the general public without having to have an interpreter or someone to communicate on their behalf.”

Gordon Henderson, from AXA PPP healthcare, said: “For a fourth year, the programme has continued to discover and showcase the very best in health tech innovation, not just to integrate into our member health and wellbeing programmes, but for the greater good of consumers too.”