Coalition for Sign Language Equity in Technology (Co-SET)

Tim Riker

Leadership Circle, Coalition for Sign Language Equity in Technology (Co-SET)

Tim Riker is a Certified Deaf Interpreter and community collaborator whose work bridges artificial intelligence, language equity, and public health. As a member of the Co-SET Leadership Circle, he champions the ethical integration of AI in sign language technologies, advocating for Deaf, DeafBlind, and Hard of Hearing communities to have a voice in shaping accessible and equitable tech futures.

With over 15 years of experience in interpreting, education, and advocacy, Tim’s work spans national and local initiatives. He collaborates with the Deaf YES! Center for Deaf Empowerment and Recovery, focusing on health equity, and consults with organizations to design inclusive, community-driven solutions. Tim also serves as an adjunct lecturer in medical education at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, where he trains future clinicians to improve healthcare access and outcomes for Deaf patients.

His work has been featured in national forums on AI and language access, and he continues to bridge the gap between technology developers, healthcare systems, and Deaf communities. Tim is driven by a lifelong commitment to justice, language access, and culturally responsive innovation that centers Deaf experiences.

Erin Sanders-Sigmon

Leadership Circle, Coalition for Sign Language Equity in Technology (Co-SET)

Ms. Sanders-Sigmon is a game changer, mentor, deaf & DeafBlind multilingual Interpreter, transliterator, writer, consultant, abolitionist, and survivor of ZOOM Culture. She believes in 360* views, ALL Justices, especially Language, Disability, Transformative, Restorative, Social, and Racial Justice. Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Ms. Sanders-Sigmon’s lifelong aim is to dismantle all hierarchies, and while uplifting the underrepresented, underserved, also influencing those in a position of privilege. The mission? To unite and create a just environment and spaces that are fully accessible for all walks of life, in the plethora of settings that exist in our current milieu., and finally, passing on that legacy. A just legacy that is sustainable… until the end of time. Erin is a board member of Manos Unidas/Hands United and the Region 1 Representative for Mano a Mano, Inc.

Molly Glass

Leadership Circle, Coalition for Sign Language Equity in Technology (Co-SET)

Molly Glass is a Deaf professional with a strong commitment to ethical and community-centered solutions. For the past three years, she has worked as an ASL Specialist and Deaf Interpreter (DI) at Kara Technologies, contributing to innovative language access projects through signed avatar technology. She graduated college in 2010 with a B.S in Multi-disciplinary Studies and recently obtained a Certificate in Deaf Interpreting (CIDI) from Rochester Institute of Technology / NTID. In 2025, she joined the leadership team of CoSET, where they advocate for inclusive, ethical AI design that reflects the lived experiences of the Deaf community.

She lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia with her husband and two children. Outside of advocacy and tech roles, she enjoys traveling, writing, getting lost in a good book, and coffee meetups with friends.

Jeff Shaul

Leadership Circle, Coalition for Sign Language Equity in Technology (Co-SET)

Jeff Shaul is a builder, tinkerer, and advocate for accessible technology, born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, and now residing in Rochester, New York. He’s passionate about creating tools that serve Deaf and signing communities, combining human-centered design with cutting-edge AI to make digital spaces more inclusive. As CTO of GoSign.AI, he leads projects that bring sign languages into everyday tech, from educational games to smart home systems, ensuring the future of AI reflects the full range of human expression. With a background that bridges engineering, design, and community organizing, Jeff focuses on making innovation collaborative, ethical, and grounded in lived experience. Whether he’s prototyping new apps, scaling them up, or facilitating tough conversations about equity and tech, he brings both technological excellence and unique perspectives to every project.

ASL Version: https://youtu.be/AhQ2jcUgh2E

In the fall of 2024, after a year of partnership with the Interpreting SAFE AI Task Force, the Advisory Group on AI and Sign Language Interpreting upgraded its name to the Coalition for Sign Language Equity in Technology (CoSET).

Currently, CoSET members are engaged in a joint organizational design process with members from the Task Force to establish a dedicated non-profit organization devoted to a collaborative mission and shared vision:

MISSION: to protect the integrity of communication between principal communicators during any interpreted interaction by developing standards for responsive AI systems and setting performance benchmarks for human-only, machine-only, and combined human+machine interpreting solutions.

VISION: that sign language and spoken language equity will be integral to the global technology landscape, and that CoSET will be recognized as an authority for setting standards, certifying technology, and advocating for the inclusion of all signed and spoken languages.

The most significant product to date is the joint Guidance on AI for Interpreting Services (July, 2024). The Guidance outlines an overarching framework to be wholly adopted or adapted to the context of use for businesses, service providers (including government) and interpreting agencies, keeping the four principles intact. The principles (listed below) provide a practical baseline for SAFE (Safe, Accountable, Fair, Ethical) technology from corporations and/or start-ups seeking to sell automated machine translation apps or platforms as a replacement for human interpreting. This is already happening with some spoken language pairs in the US, for instance, English and Spanish. The healthcare industry in particular is being intensely targeted for such translation apps. Some companies are marketing or selling “solutions” in the sign language space but none of these offer bidirectional communication. As such, they do not meet the most basic criteria for two-way, dialogical interpreting applications.

The four principles of the joint Guidance on AI anticipate possible points of confusion and clarify them in advance. These principles satisfy both SAFE AI and #DeafSafeAI for automated interpreting by artificial intelligence (AIxAI). The hashtag DeafSafeAI provides a signal that automated interpreting needs to be designed, delivered, implemented and usable by sign language users and minoritized speakers of spoken languages on par with its utility for majority language English speakers. The joint Guidance introduces the four bedrock principles and defines them, anticipating possible points of confusion and clarifying them in advance.

1. AUTONOMY for Principal Communicators (“End Users” from the perspective of tech businesses and developers). The principle of autonomy insists on the new option for communicators to Accept or Decline the use of automated interpreting, including the live option to toggle backand-forth between AI and human interpreters. Disambiguation: Accept/Decline is distinct from the way “informed consent” is used by companies to companies to document your decision to “opt in” (and use their service) or “opt out” (and not use their service) to their predetermined framework for collecting, analysing and otherwise using your data. From the standpoint of #DeafSafeAI, data usage is a distinctly second, subsidiary principle after one Accepts/Declines the use of an AI solution for automated interpreting.

2. TRANSPARENCY of quality metrics from tech companies and service providers using automated interpreting platforms and tools. This principle directs developers to reveal the relative strengths/ weaknesses of the specific language combination used by principal communicators (e.g., ASL <> English, Korean<>French, Japanese<>ASL). There should be visual indicators during use as well as plain language explanations of bidirectional capabilities.

3. ACCOUNTABILITY by tech companies for errors and harms to principal communicators. Accountability is a higher standard than the “responsible AI” movement, which sets its bar with acknowledgement on its own (not necessarily repair or remedy). The concept of responsible AI originated within the tech sector and serves their marketing goals. Accountability builds on the public safety premises of responsible AI but insists that penalties will be assessed for both systemic and individual damages to communities and persons whose communications are misrepresented or distorted by automated interpreting solutions.

4. IMPROVING SAFETY AND WELL-BEING of principal communicators and the exercise and practices of multicultural, plurilingual society by following existing laws and ethical practices about providing communication accommodations for language difference. The first three principles interlock with each other to generate real-time, embodied, real-world evidence across language communities that goes beyond legal minima to measurably improve quality of life.

Overall, the joint Guidance from CoSET and the Interpreting SAFE AI Task Force is an expression of freedom for human beings to live, work, play and innovate together with the new tools and affordances of artificial intelligence.

Since the Symposium on AI and Sign Language Interpreting at Brown University in April of 2024, CoSET members have proactively presented to groups and conferences throughout the US, and started initial conversations with allies in other countries. Dedicated presentations have been provided to Sign Language Interpreters in National Government (SLING), Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), Consumer Access Council of the Federal Communications Commission, and the Colorado State Senate Language Access Board. Presentations have also been provided at conferences including the National Association of the Deaf, Conference of Interpreter Trainers, Orange County Department of Education Interpreters and Translators, Mid-America Chapter of the American Translators Association (MICATA), and the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA).

CoSET will be at the Deaf Academics Conference in June and the 2025 RID National conference in August.

Please engage with us on social media using the hashtag #DeafSafeAI and sign up for the CoSET newsletter at this link!

References:

Interpreting SAFE AI Task Force (July, 2024). “Interpreting SAFE AI Task Force Guidance on AI and Interpreting Services.” https://safeaitf.org/guidance/ Retrieved May 12, 2025.