Hackathon team creates digital tool to help seniors understand official letters

LetterKey translates content in the 4 official languages and also to Cantonese, Hokkien

- Sarah Koh

For many, reading letters is a simple, everyday task often taken for granted—a brief glance before setting the papers aside.

But during a series of visits to an active ageing centre in June, a group of five young adults quickly realised that this routine act was far from straightforward for some older individuals.

"A significant number of seniors would approach staff members with a bundle of government-issued letters throughout the day, requiring help with letter-reading and translation," said 27-year-old Owen Gan, a user interface and experience design intern at Trinax.

Each request typically required anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours of assistance from a centre employee, with language barriers at times further complicating the process.

To help both parties save time and effort, the group created LetterKey—a web app that helps to translate, summarise and highlight key information in letters from government agencies.

Apart from translating content in the four official languages, it can also translate content to Cantonese and Hokkien.

Some of the more common letters that staff encounter are insurance-related ones from Income Insurance, and income-related ones from the Central Provident Fund Board.

"Though government letters typically come in four languages, one of the key points we want to address is the complexity of some terms used," said Mr Gan, who added that the tool helps simplify such terms and extract actionable information.

For instance, a Workfare letter may contain terms such as "payouts" and "contributions", which might be a little advanced for those with a basic grasp of English, said Mr Gan's teammate, Ms Cham Li Hui.

The 24-year-old product data scientist and her four teammates met during the inaugural Sparks x Build for Good Community Hackathon in June.