Jon Mowl, founder and CEO of Play With ASL, is speaking at SXSW EDU 2027. His solo session, ASL Has a Marketing Problem. Games Are Fixing It., is one of the 161 PanelPicker sessions SXSW EDU announced for the 2027 program.

SXSW EDU 2027 runs March 13–16 in Austin, Texas.

The session

  • Title: ASL Has a Marketing Problem. Games Are Fixing It.
  • Format: Solo session, 30 minutes
  • Track: Accessibility Solutions
  • Focus: Convergence
  • Speaker: Jon Mowl, Founder & CEO, Play With ASL

The session is listed under Solos on the official SXSW EDU announcement. SXSW EDU will publish the day, time, and room with the full schedule.

What Jon will argue

For decades, the reason to learn ASL has been framed as a kindness: learn it because Deaf people exist. That is true. It also only reaches people who already care.

Jon’s case is that ASL does not have an adoption problem. It has a marketing problem. ASL is a spatial language. Meaning sits in the hands, the face, the body, and the eyes at the same time. Headsets, gesture controls, and glasses are making everyday interfaces spatial too. That is a reason to learn ASL that has nothing to do with charity, and it changes who shows up to learn.

Three takeaways:

  1. Why “why learn ASL?” is a marketing question, and how moving the answer from charity to utility changes who shows up.
  2. What ASL educators told us during NSF I-Corps customer discovery about what they need. Every ASL teacher we interviewed said they lack ASL resources.
  3. Why a language that has placed meaning in three-dimensional space for 200 years fits the spatial interfaces arriving now.

Play With ASL is the proof point: a Deaf-led company building real games for ASL practice. The product is not the story. The reframe is.

About Play With ASL

Jon is a fourth-generation Deaf entrepreneur. He founded Play With ASL so people could practice American Sign Language by playing. The games are Memory Match, TILT!, and Multiple Choice, for schools, families, and independent learners. The games are practice alongside a class curriculum. Play With ASL: School Edition is 1EdTech LTI Advantage Complete certified and works with the LMS a school already uses.

Play With ASL has 75,000 iOS downloads in 90 countries.

See you in Austin

If you are going to SXSW EDU 2027, come to the session. To meet in Austin, get in touch. If you teach, School Edition is the classroom app.

Play. Learn. Sign.