Google Pixel 11 brings real-time ASL-to-text translation to Gboard and Live Transcribe
Google is turning the Pixel 11 into a more accessible communication tool with a new sign language translation feature powered by Google DeepMind. The technology, called SL2T, short for sign-language-to-text, can convert American Sign Language into typed English and is now built into Gboard and the Live Transcribe app on the Pixel 11.
The idea is simple but powerful: sign in front of the phone, and the Pixel 11 turns the signing into text. That means ASL users can use sign language in places where they would normally have to type, including messages, web searches, documents, and Gemini prompts. Google is making the feature available without an extra fee.
For many deaf users, this is more than a helpful keyboard upgrade. Around 70 million people worldwide use sign language as their primary language, across more than 200 different sign languages. Voice dictation has long been available to hearing users, but there has not been an equivalent tool for people who communicate through signing. With SL2T, Google is trying to close that gap.
In Live Transcribe, the feature could make everyday conversations more natural. Instead of typing a reply during an in-person exchange, an ASL user can sign and have their response converted into text. That could be useful in classrooms, workplaces, shops, appointments, and any situation where fast communication matters.
One of the most important parts of Google’s approach is privacy. According to Google, the system does not send camera video to its servers. Instead, the phone uses MediaPipe Holistic to analyze the footage locally and turn the person’s movements into body landmarks. These landmarks are basic coordinate points for the hands, arms, head, and face.
Only those coordinate numbers are sent for processing, while the actual camera video is discarded immediately. This design means the translation model works from movement data rather than raw video, which is a major privacy consideration for a feature that relies on the camera.
Google is also taking a different technical path from many earlier sign language translation systems. Some older approaches translated signing into “glosses” first, which are simplified written labels for individual signs. The problem is that sign languages are not just hand movements. Facial expressions, body position, space, and context all carry meaning.
SL2T avoids that intermediate step and translates directly from body landmarks into written text. That could help preserve more of the meaning behind natural signing, although the system still has clear limitations.
The model was trained using more than 100,000 hours of footage across over 50 sign languages. About a quarter of that training data involved American Sign Language. On the FLEURS-ASL benchmark, Google says the model achieved a 70 BLEURT score, a metric used to evaluate translation quality, without being trained on the test data in advance.
At launch, however, the feature supports only ASL to English. That means users of British Sign Language, German Sign Language, and many other sign languages will have to wait. Google says more languages and more devices are planned, but it has not provided a release timeline.
Google is also being upfront about the system’s mistakes. In its own examples, fast fingerspelling can be misread, such as “prey” becoming “grey.” A descriptive classifier may be missed, or the tense of a sentence may change when the system does not have enough context.
The company says it worked on several real-world challenges, including reducing delay during live translation, preventing the system from generating text when no one is signing, supporting left-handed signers, and handling one-handed signing. One-handed use is especially important on a phone, since the other hand may be holding the device.
Deaf professionals were involved in the development and release process. Google worked with an advisory group called AISLAC, which also helped create a report explaining what the model can do and where it still falls short.
For now, the biggest limitation is availability. The ASL-to-text feature is currently tied to the Pixel 11. Google opened preorders on August 12, and the phone was still listed as a preorder on August 13 with a starting price of $899. Older Pixel models, including the Pixel 10 Pro, do not currently support the feature.
Even with its limits, SL2T could become one of the most meaningful Pixel 11 features for accessibility. If Google expands support to more sign languages and more devices, sign-language-to-text translation could become a major step toward making digital communication faster, easier, and more inclusive for deaf users.
