Crossing the language barrier: A sister’s love inspires a long-term project

When Elisheva Ezor’s brother headed out onto New York City’s streets, she worried.

When they were growing up, she was concerned that his behaviors — although common for individuals with autism — could be perceived negatively by bystanders. A worst-case scenario: A police officer responding to an emergency situation might consider these behaviors as noncompliance.

And he isn’t alone. While her brother Avi can speak, some individuals with autism are nonverbal and rely on devices such as communication boards, which use images to convey actions or ideas. Hard-of-hearing individuals may also find it difficult to respond to verbal commands, as well as people with language barriers or auditory processing issues.

A dual major in math and business administration, Elisheva Ezor ’24 was named a Harpur Fellow for her passion project: The development of an app that will allow first responders such as emergency medical services and law enforcement to communicate with individuals who might find it difficult to understand or follow verbal commands.

Unlike many Harpur Fellows’ projects, the app — it doesn’t have a proper name yet — won’t be finished in a summer or even a year. That’s OK: When you’re coming up with something that could potentially save lives, it’s crucial to get it right.

“This is a big project and it’s going to take a lot of work — but I’m really committed and I’m somebody who gets things done,” Ezor says. “I don’t want to rush it because I want to create something that will actually help people.”

Alumni donor support for initiatives such as Harpur Fellows plays an important role in supporting projects such as Ezor’s, notes Harpur Edge Director Erin Cody.

“Offering students an opportunity to dream big and be the change they want to see in the world in collaboration with a community is exactly what the Harpur Fellows program wishes to inspire,” Cody says.

Counteracting ableism and supporting people with different abilities has long been a passion for Ezor, who is dyslexic. She gave a talk during the 2022 Binghamton University TEDx conference about her campaign in sixth grade to end a compulsory spelling bee; her activism was prompted after she witnessed her peers laughing at a classmate who spelled a word incorrectly.

Under development

She found her current mission via the First-year Research Immersion’s public health stream. Her team explored interactions between law enforcement and individuals with mental health conditions and disabilities, and discovered a significant gap: While law enforcement officers in some communities receive training on how to deal with this population, it’s frequently not extensive, she remembers.

“I went home to my mom and I talked about how frustrating this was. Together, we came up with the idea of developing a tool to communicate, since not everyone can use verbal communication,” says Ezor, also a Binghamton Scholar.

She has some experience in this area. From the ages of 12 to 18, she worked with a nonverbal child through Friendship Circle NYC, which brings friendship and companionship to Jewish children with special needs. To communicate, friends and family used an app that showed animations depicting the desired activity, such as eating or taking a shower — essentially, the digital version of a communication board.

The product she wants to create would be geared toward the needs of first responders, she explains: quick and easy to use in the field.

“The benefit of this app is that it can provide an alternative modality for individuals who might find verbal communication difficult,” she says.

Say a police officer needs the nonverbal individual to show an identification card. He can select the verbal command on the app and a short video would play that demonstrates the action. Or, an emergency medical technician might use the app during a call to learn the location of a patient’s pain.

But Ezor knows it’s no easy task to develop a new product from scratch and get it into the right hands; it could take years, she admits. The first step: finding out what police officers and first responders actually need. For example, police officers need to have their hands free during a traffic stop, so an iPad isn’t a feasible option.

During the summer after her junior year, Ezor connected with a New York City Police Department liaison, who was both encouraging and realistic: She needed to come up with a Fminimum viable product (MVP) — a viable early version that could be tested by potential users. She reached out to other stakeholders, too, including an organization that trains police officers to interact with the disabled community.

“This is honestly the most difficult thing I’ve done,” she says.

She used the Harpur Fellows funding to hire a developer, who created a basic app with half a dozen animations. After testing it with potential users, she plans to transition into videos because they’re easier to understand.

She works on the app project largely during breaks and her downtime. Outside of her classes and her mission, Ezor has an artistic streak and has exhibited her paintings at Harpur Edge’s Open Gallery Night. She’s also preparing for her post-Commencement future, with summer internships at Dow Jones and JPMorgan. After graduation, she plans to earn her MBA, pursue a career in product management — and remain a devoted sister to Avi.

On the app front, plans are in the works to connect with other potential testers in city government and the nonprofit world for feedback. Once the MVP is finished, she hopes to have law enforcement officers beta-test it. The final product will, by design, be free.

“I’m not doing this because I want to make money; I’m doing it because my brother has autism,” she explains.