Smart glasses are giving the deaf a real-time display of live subtitles as they talk, right in front of their eyes.
The technology uses ready-to-use ‘AR’ augmented reality glasses that connect to smartphones with an app that turns any chosen speech into text displayed inside the lenses.
“Powerful. It’s powerful. I cannot underestimate the power and importance for hearing impaired people around the world to feel that they no longer have to rely solely on lip reading. It’s a big moment,” Josh Feldman, a 23-year-old profoundly deaf management consultant, told Reuters.
The software, called XRAI Glass, was inspired by Dan Scarfe’s observation of his grandfather’s growing isolation when he lost his hearing.
“There was just a little epiphany moment where I thought, well wait a second, he watches TV all the time with subtitles. Why can’t we subtitle the world?” Scarfe told Reuters.
The software is still being developed, but Scarfe says it can now recognize who is speaking and will soon have the power to translate languages, voice tones, accents and tone.
“I’m getting a stream of subtitled information in real-time where normally I might be late. I may not catch everything, but it’s giving me a real-time narrative that allows me to be informed. It allows me to be involved, it allows me to make decisions because I know what is being said,” said Steve Crump, founder of DeafKidz International.
XRAI Glass is now recruiting alpha testers who can’t lip read or struggle to pick up multiple conversations at once to help improve the software.
Source: CNN Brasil
