Photo: Screenshot / Transcense
Conversations in real time
Hard of hearing or deaf people often feel excluded. The new app Transcense prevents that: It lets people hear by transcribing conversations.
There are wheelchairs, prosthetics, speech computers and almost countless aids for people with disabilities, so they can actively participate in social life. Inclusion means something. But despite modern technology, deaf or hard-of-hearing people often continue to feel disabled in their everyday lives. In theory, there is also the appropriate aid called hearing aid here. In practice, this helps only poorly.
Four students from the US have not only recognized this problem, but have now tackled it. Her invention is called Transcense and is intended to integrate deaf people back into social life. As with many startups today, the product is an app. Together, the four students have developed software that transcribes conversations in real time.
The inventors all have experience with hearing problems. While one of them comes from a hard-of-hearing family, another is deaf himself. Completing the team are two more students, both of whom speak the sign language.
They know the problems of the hearing aids that many people suffer from. In everyday life, these often only work theoretically - as soon as several voices meet and talk one another, it is almost impossible for persons with hearing loss to follow the conversation. They feel excluded. Transcense lets her hear again.
What sounds impossible, the students have implemented: Transcense activates the microphones of the surrounding smartphones that record the conversation. Thanks to modern speech recognition, the app can distinguish between different voices. The special feature: The words are transcribed live. Deaf and hard-of-hearing people can immediately follow the conversation on the screen and actively participate in it at the same time. Even for deaf-mute people, the students have come up with something: they can respond with a digital voice.
To finance the app is currently running a crowdfunding campaign on the site Indiegogo. In the first three days, the inventors have already taken over $ 9, 000 of the required 25, 000. To reach the goal, they still have a short month left. Transcense lets deaf people hear, making the seemingly impossible possible.
