A North Brentwood resident is one of the designers behind a popular smartphone app for learning sign language.

Melissa Malzkuhn, who is the creative director of Motion Light Lab for digital technology at Gallaudet University, helped design The ASL App, which has been downloaded more than two million times on iPhones and Androids.

“We wanted to make ASL easy for anyone to learn, so that was the motivation/inspiration behind our product,” she said. “We have been continuously expanding the app by adding more bundle and sign categories.”

Along with the basics, like finger spelling and introductory phrases, the app also teaches more than 1,500 signs for everything from ordering at a restaurant or bar to talking about politics through brief videos of six different models demonstrating the signs.

She told the Hyattsville Wire that she and her brother and sister are all third-generation deaf and native signers, she was born to deaf parents and her grandparents were also deaf. Just five percent of the Deaf community is third-generation.

Malzkuhn’s company, Ink & Salt, has also designed an app that teaches sign language through Care Bears and one that allows users to show text in a large font easily, a useful tool when Deaf people are trying to communicate with people who don’t know ASL.

Route 1 corridor residents interested in learning sign to communicate with the area’s growing Deaf community can also sign up for a short class at Streetcar 82 Brewing Co. in Hyattsville.

You can watch a PBS NewsHour segment on Malzkuhn here.