VLibras Suite — Brazil's Free, Open-Source Portuguese-to-Libras 3D Avatar Translator for Websites and Apps

VLibras is a free, open-source suite developed by the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB) with Brazilian federal ministries that machine-translates Portuguese into Brazilian Sign Language (Libras), rendered by a 3D signing avatar. Components include a browser plugin that site owners embed, Android and iOS apps, a desktop tool, a video portal and a digital-TV integration, plus an API for third parties and the WikiLibras crowdsourcing tool for maintaining the sign vocabulary.
Reported scale: Zero Project (2024 awardee) reports about 21,000 signs, roughly 100,000 Portuguese–Libras sentences, about 40 million daily accesses and 3 million translations a month in 2023, and availability across more than 120,000 Brazilian websites. An earlier summary on the Fundação Banco do Brasil Transforma platform (certified 2019) reported about 14,000 signs, 100,000+ downloads, 1,500+ sites (federal government, Congress, Senate and telecom operators) and a 4.2/5 rating from about 850 Android reviews. It cites 9.7 million Brazilians with hearing impairments and only about 5% of websites accessible beforehand. It won the National Web Accessibility Award (2016) and the LATAM Smart City Award (2018).
Limits: the sources report adoption, not translation quality. No independent accuracy study or deaf-user comprehension evaluation was found, automatic Portuguese-to-Libras translation is a simplification of a language with its own grammar, and Zero Project notes scarce sign-language data was the main development challenge. The two sources also differ on vocabulary size and counts (as-of dates differ), so figures should be read as indicative.

Read the full analysis: https://softwarepublico.gov.br/social/suite-vlibras