I’m an interaction designer and HoH. Slowly becoming fluent in sign language. Yes, I agree, most equipment that we would like already exists or is developed by companies already in the field. There are several posts here every year from design students having assignments similar to this.
What prevents us from being included or having access to better products? Usually it is question of resources. If you only target Deaf/HoH, it’s hard to make a profit. Someone has to pay, and as a Deaf private person you don’t have the funding for advanced systems. Especially if you consider that much of the problems are about language, not just perception. What I mean is hearing aids, CI and other technology often helps us perceive sound, but it does not becomes clear enough to allow us to fully be included in for example a conversation with several speakers at coffee time or dinner. This means that we often appear manage well, but still are socially isolated in many situations without other people realizing that we are not following the conversation.
To mitigate this we need things like captions and interpreters, and this is expensive and not a technological solution. Auto-captions are not good enough, since the algorithms actually don’t understand the meaning of what is said. Usually the algorithms have problems with the same things that are hard for me to hear, such as uncommon names or technical terms at work! Exactly the few words that I actually need to get right. This means it’s much about language and communication, not about having access to the sounds themselves.
I’m not sure it’s possible to create something that will create more understanding. My experience is that some people are interested and quickly catch on when I explain, they might even become interested in learning sign language, but others simply are not interested in making the effort. Some people might be very aural and not visual? Then it’s difficult and uncomfortable to change approach. Others simply are not understanding towards others in general, and expect people to fit the standard norm, irregularities of what the difference is. I often meet HoH or late deafend that are terrified of sign language, because it not the normal way to communicate. They don’t understand how useful it can be, and many suffer from isolation in way they shouldn’t have to.
There already is a lot of technology that does bring us together, however. Facebook and texting are really great, and has made things so much easier.
