U1ai

Background artwork: the Unmute1AI Constitution as eight stacked glass layers. From the base: Unmute1AI Core, Ignis, Anneal Mesh, Sentinel, PhaseFlow, OmniSign, Signal, Accessibility First.

Company

Communication for everyone. Intelligence with integrity.

Unmute1AI is a mission-driven Delaware nonprofit building dignity-first AI for Deaf and neurodiverse communities. Based in Washington Heights, Manhattan, New York. Founded by Matthew Sacks.

About me

How loud silence can be.

Before U1ai, I worked on an ambulance.

Emergency medicine teaches you quickly that communication isn't a courtesy. It's triage. Every call starts with questions: Where does it hurt? What happened? Can you hear me? Every answer changes what you do next.

And sometimes there are no answers. A patient who can't speak. A patient who can't hear you. A patient whose way of communicating doesn't fit the script you've been trained to follow.

In the back of that ambulance, with the lights flashing and the minutes counting, you learn something most people never have to: silence is loud.

It fills the truck. It fills the space between a question and an answer. And the person inside that silence is still trying to tell you something.

That never left me.

It's why I started building Unmute1AI (U1ai), an accessibility-first AI platform working to break communication barriers for Deaf, hard-of-hearing, and neurodivergent people through real-time sign language translation, voice synthesis, and privacy-first, on-device AI.

But accessibility is only half the equation. Security matters just as much.

I'm also developing U1si-q, our security-focused approach to governing AI actions. The principle is simple: AI may interpret a signal, but interpretation is not authorization. An AI system should never confuse understanding what someone means with having permission to act on their behalf. Actions require explicit, accessible consent.

Because accessibility without autonomy isn't accessibility. And privacy shouldn't be the price someone pays to be understood.

I'm autistic, and I'm building with the understanding that communication doesn't look the same for everyone. People shouldn't have to mask, adapt to rigid systems, or fight to make themselves understood just to participate in the world around them.

I'm also the author of The Signal Between Silence, a novel about hearing loss, connection, and everything that goes unheard.

For me, these aren't separate projects. They're different expressions of the same belief: everyone has something to say, even when the world doesn't know how to listen.

That's why I'm building U1ai.

Not just to make technology smarter, but to make communication more human, more secure, and accessible to the people technology has too often left behind.

The mission

Accessibility and security are the same problem

When AI speaks and acts for a person, an accessibility failure and a security failure look identical: the system does something the person never authorized.

Unmute1AI builds for Deaf, hard-of-hearing, and neurodivergent users first - not as an add-on, but as the design constraint. The same boundary that keeps an agent from acting on a misread sign, a misheard phrase, or a confused prompt is the boundary that keeps every user safe: interpretation is not authority.

That is why the work runs through layers that stay separate - Signal, Omnisign, PhaseFlow, Sentinel, AnnealMesh, and Ignis - with governance, verification and recovery designed in rather than bolted on. Every product we ship inherits that boundary.

How we build

Design commitments

Accessibility by design

Designed for everyone, from the start - WCAG-aligned across every surface.

Privacy by default

Local-first whenever possible. Data stays close to the person it belongs to.

Edge-capable

Built to run where you are, from datacenter to device.

Multilingual

Designed for translation with cultural and regional context preserved.

Unmute1AI metallic plaque - Accessible, inclusive, intelligent, trusted, secure
Accessible · Inclusive · Intelligent · Trusted · Secure

Contact

Let's make your product accessible

Partnerships, pilots and questions - reach the founding team directly at unmute1ai@gmail.com.