Sep 14, 2026
On September 14, AISA was named a finalist at the 20th Best of Tech Awards, the Greater Cleveland Partnership’s yearly celebration of the region’s tech community. When the finalists went up on the big screen at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, our logo sat in the top row.
We did not win this year. We still left with what we came for: a full day of conversations about how people learn American Sign Language.
A day at our table
We spent the day at our table in the Tech Ecosystem Showcase. People from across Cleveland’s tech scene stopped by to ask about the app and what we are building.
Our answer was the app itself. AISA School teaches ASL with short lessons and signs recorded by a Deaf signer. You sign along with your camera and get instant feedback on your signing, and that is what we showed visitors at the table.
We met people from many different sectors, and every conversation was a chance to show how a sign language app fits into Cleveland’s tech scene.
Not the winner, still a win
Right after the ceremony, Amirali Rezaei recorded a short message for our followers in the museum hall. Being a finalist, he said, was “a pleasure”: a place among some of the best startups across Greater Cleveland.
He also said why these nights matter to a small team: “we always come out as a winner from these kind of events because we find those connections.”
What comes next
Cleveland keeps showing up for us. In February 2025, Amirali won all three of his categories at Accelerate Cleveland, and in October 2026 AISA was a semi-finalist at the Grainger Engineering Tech Startup Challenge in Chicago.
More than 200,000 people have downloaded AISA School so far, and every event like this one puts the app in front of people who have never seen it.
Thank you to the Greater Cleveland Partnership for having us, congratulations to this year’s winners, and thank you to everyone who stopped by our table. See you in 2027.
Want to learn your first signs? Download the app and start practicing.