Three senses: rhythms, touch, light and sound
One warning. Three ways to understand it.
See it
The screen becomes a beacon.
A full-screen color wash, a large picture of the danger, and a white torch frame at the screen’s edges, readable from across a room, at full brightness even if your screen was dim.
Feel it
Each danger has its own vibration.
Water rolls. Storm knocks. Ground holds. Fire races. Face down in a pillow at 3 a.m., the pattern alone wakes you and tells you what is coming. For DeafBlind people, this is how the alert arrives. The full message follows in accessible text.
Hear it
A siren tone for the people around you.
The same rhythm as the vibration, played at full volume even if the phone was turned down, so a hearing partner in the next room hears what you feel.
Every alert is sent on all three senses, and the hazard rhythm reads the same on any ONE of them: the rhythm names the danger family, and the exact event and action always follow in accessible language. No essential part of a warning depends on any single sensory feature. It also helps everyone else: asleep, headphones on, in a loud factory. Everyone is situationally deaf for hours every day.
How serious is it? Color never works alone.
Four levels, spoken three ways at once: color for the eye, marks for people who are color-blind, vibration strength for touch.
SAFE NOW
all clear
an affirmative all-clear message, presented calmly: no alarm rhythm
BE CAREFUL
get ready
gentle vibration, one quarter strength
DANGER COMING
prepare to act
half strength, and light and sound at full power from here up
ACT NOW
life danger
three quarters to full strength, same rhythm, never faster
The marks count the danger: one at BE CAREFUL, two at DANGER COMING, three at ACT NOW. The hand reads severity in four distinct strengths, so a DeafBlind person feels which step it is; from DANGER COMING upward, light and sound deliver at full power, because they exist to reach you. The all-clear plays no alarm at all: the screen says in calm words what has ended, because silence alone is never proof of safety. When the danger changes, the phone alerts again.
What danger is it? A pattern your body can learn.
Not fifty patterns, a small vocabulary of danger families. These are drawn to scale below, and shown still, never flashing: this page is safe for photosensitive visitors, exactly like the app.
GROUND
earthquake, landslide
one long pulse that does not let go
WATER
flood, tsunami, storm surge
long, rolling pulses that keep coming
STORM
cyclone, typhoon, tornado, severe storm
three sharp pulses
FIRE
fire, wildfire
ten fast pulses, nothing else is this fast
THREAT
danger from people (attack, active threat, missing child)
one hard knock, one long push, five rapid fires, then a full stop
TEST
test or drill, never a real emergency
a gentle double tap, a long quiet, then again: checking, not warning
OTHER
any hazard outside the named families (health, chemical, infrastructure)
three steady calls, evenly spaced, for what has no shape of its own
ALL CLEAR
the danger has ended (an affirmative, authenticated update)
one long soft press easing away, then a short settling one, never looped
Each drawing is one full cycle, read from the published SDK when the page is built: filled bars are pulses, empty space is quiet, and every family shares the same seconds scale.
These patterns are a draft. Testing with Deaf and DeafBlind people is how they will be finished, and that is the point of the app.
Why these rhythms? They come from the hazards, and from sign languages.
The patterns are not invented codes. Each one is the hazard’s own movement, turned into touch and light, converging with how sign languages already depict these dangers. You do not memorize them. You recognize them.
These rhythms come from sign languages. Deaf people have carried the shape of danger in our hands for centuries. Now that knowledge can save everyone.
WATER rolls.
A wave swells, travels, and hits. The rhythm does the same: long, then long again, like the rolling hand motion of the signs for waves and flood.
GROUND holds.
An earthquake does not pause, and neither does its rhythm: one long unbroken shake, like the sustained shaking of the earthquake sign. Nothing else is unbroken.
STORM knocks.
Wind arrives in gusts that slam. Three sharp knocks, like something striking the house, spaced like the storm itself.
FIRE flickers.
Flames flicker fast. Many quick pulses, like the sign for fire in many sign languages: the fingers of both hands flickering upward. Nothing else is this fast.
Because waves, quakes, and flames behave the same in every country, these rhythms need no translation and no reading. They work for speakers of minority languages, foreign travelers, and children exactly as they work for Deaf and DeafBlind people.