Zakee, founder of DeafPing tells us about the free Door alert they built (BSL)

A while back, I took a temporary role as a UK Relay Advisor helping deaf and hard-of hearing people make phone calls through the text relay service.

It wasn’t a long stint, but it changed everything about how I understood the daily reality of being deaf in the UK.

One frustration came up constantly: the front door. Someone’s knocking. The doorbell is ringing. A delivery driver waiting with a parcel. But if you can’t hear it, none of that matters.

You’ll just find the ‘sorry we missed you’ card on the mat. Again.

Your friend texts that they’ve been outside for 10 minutes. The driver leaves your package in the rain because nobody answered.

It’s not a dramatic problem. It’s not life-threatening. But it happens every single day to millions of people across the UK, and even after that job ended, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

The existing solutions never quite made sense to me. Flashing doorbell systems cost £80 to £350. They require installation, wiring, and they only work in the rooms where you’ve put the receiver. If you’re in the bathroom, the garden, or a different floor, you’ve missed it.

Vibrating pagers work but people stop carrying them. Smart doorbells send push notifications that arrive 30 seconds too late, after the delivery driver has already walked away.

I wanted something simpler. Something free. Something that works everywhere – at home, in a rented flat, in an Airbnb, at a friend’s house.

How does DeafPing work?

The idea is deliberately simple. You sign up at deafping.com (free, takes about 60 seconds). You get a unique QR code. You print it out or stick it by your front door.

When someone arrives – a delivery driver, a friend, a carer, anyone they scan the QR code with their phone camera. No app to download. No account to create. They just scan.

You get an instant text message on your phone: someone’s at your door.

That’s it. The whole product.

No hardware, no Wi-Fi required in your home, no batteries to charge, no monthly fees for individual users.

It works because the visitor does the work, not you. They scan, you receive. And because almost everyone in 2026 knows how to scan a QR code (delivery drivers do it dozens of times a day for parcels), the learning curve for visitors is essentially zero.

What happened when I launched?

I built the first version of DeafPing in early 2026 and shared it in a couple of deaf community Facebook groups. I wasn’t sure anyone would care about something so simple.

Within 24 hours, over 70 people had signed up. Within a month, we passed 300 users entirely through word of mouth in the deaf community, with zero advertising budget.

The messages I received genuinely surprised me. People telling me they’d missed deliveries for years and had just accepted it as normal. A woman who said her elderly deaf mother could finally know when the carer arrived without sitting by the window all morning.

A university student in halls who had been relying on flatmates to knock on his bedroom door whenever someone came to the building.

That short time working as a Relay Advisor had given me a glimpse into these frustrations. But hearing directly from hundreds of people living them every day made me realise the
problem was far more widespread and emotionally significant than I understood.

What’s next?

DeafPing is free for every individual deaf and hard-of-hearing person, and that’s never changing. I fund the running costs (every text message costs real money to send) through a small Pro plan for families who want multiple people to receive the alert, and through Airbnb hosts who use the system for their guests.

I’ve recently started producing weatherproof QR stickers and plaques that users can order for their door – because a printed piece of paper sellotaped to a doorframe doesn’t survive a British winter. These cost a few pounds and ship free.

Longer term, I want to partner with housing associations, councils, and deaf charities to distribute DeafPing stickers to every deaf person who wants one. If your organisation is interested in that conversation, I’d love to hear from you.

I will also be at the Deaf Expo in Birmingham on May 15th – come find my table and I’ll set you up in person.

Try it!

If you’re deaf or hard of hearing and you’ve ever missed a delivery, a visitor, or a friend at the door – give it a go. It’s free, it takes a minute, and the worst that happens is you get one fewer ‘sorry we missed you’ card this month.

If you know someone who’d find DeafPing useful, please share this with them. Every sign up helps make the case that deaf accessibility doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated.

Sometimes a QR code and a text message is all it takes.

By Zakee at deafping.com