Idea for perfect device for the deaf

RonJaxon

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I've posted in various discussions about ideas for a device that would help us deaf to communicate more easily. A friend of mine is an iPhone App developer and he's still trying to get all the information he needs to try and make an app that makes use of the voice recognition. Most likely the system that google voice uses since it's already on line.

Anyway, here are my ideas for the perfect device. Now keep in mind that my idea is mainly intended for those who cannot hear at all "deaf" (CI or HA won't help them or they choose not to use them). But this device would help HOH and other languages as well.

Obviously it would have to use voice recognition to turn speech into text. But as the technology improves it can be used for even more then that. In other words someday it'll improve to the point where it'll likely be called "Sound recognition". It not only interprets speech but also sounds. For example it might hear the tires of a car squealing and the text will read "Tires squeal" a lot like we see in TV Closed Captioning. I know the technology has a long way to go to reach that point but I'm confident that it will get there.

Ok, so we have a mobile device about the size of a mobile phone that has this technology. It can pick up speech and turn it into text. It will be nice to be able to see and read this text on the screen of the device but why stop there?

How about Micro displays. This is where you have the display in front of your eye and creates the illusion of a large screen in front of you. If you think this would mean you'd have to walk around with a huge device over your eyes looking like a cyborg then think again. They are getting smaller and smaller. Soon, a microdisplay will even be able to be embedded in the eye (Already being researched). but for now it could be a tiny device on a pair of eye glasses. So you can read the text while looking at the person you are talking to.
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But wait, we also have portable braille displays.

had-haptic-sixth-sense-1.jpg


If you learn to read braille then you'd be able to read the "Captioning" without having to look at anything. I think this solution could be great if a device could be made so that you can read the braille with some other body part besides your finger. Maybe something on your arm or something. I'm sure some testing would have to be done to find another location on the body that's sensitive enough to read the braille. But I like the idea and think it has a lot of potential.

Of course it would be great if this voice recognition will work better. Especially with digital sound such as a phone. So in the near future relay operators will no longer be necessary. I'm not suggesting that this is going to happen right away but the technology is improving and I'm sure it won't be too long. I'm guessing in the next 10 years or so.

I'll also add that I think it's great that the biggest internet organization (Google) is putting some effort into this issue. That's a big partner we've got in our corner.

So anyway. Just thought I'd share my ideas for a dream device for us.

Ron Jaxon
 
I had the same thoughts. The trouble is people's accents. How can the speech recognition deal with that? Also the noise backgrounds.
 
would be cool to use for more than just phone. Meet someone who cant sign? here.. talk while i hold my iphone beside you and it captions. Also great for if you didnt have paper or were trying to communicated with someone who cant write
*EQL*
 
would be cool to use for more than just phone. Meet someone who cant sign? here.. talk while i hold my iphone beside you and it captions. Also great for if you didnt have paper or were trying to communicated with someone who cant write
*EQL*

Also perfect for watching TV - no more stupid garbling captions! You can watch those DVDs that has no CC or subtitles.
 
how about a water proof viberating watch so i can make it to the weight in at bass tournaments on time?
 
I've posted in various discussions about ideas for a device that would help us deaf to communicate more easily. A friend of mine is an iPhone App developer and he's still trying to get all the information he needs to try and make an app that makes use of the voice recognition. Most likely the system that google voice uses since it's already on line.

I'd love a speech recognition app that could work with the speech of people who grew up with hearing loss. I can't use the Voice Control app on the iPhone because it's too fussy to recognize my speech, even though most people can understand me fine. I therefore find the iPhone frustrating to use because it's too slow to type on.

If the iPhone/iPod could use speaker-dependent speech recognition technology (instead of speaker-independent), then the owner could dictate notes into it, keep training the technology to his or her speech, and could then also use the same technology to caption his or her speech for people with hearing loss.

Obviously it would have to use voice recognition to turn speech into text. But as the technology improves it can be used for even more then that. In other words someday it'll improve to the point where it'll likely be called "Sound recognition". It not only interprets speech but also sounds. For example it might hear the tires of a car squealing and the text will read "Tires squeal" a lot like we see in TV Closed Captioning. I know the technology has a long way to go to reach that point but I'm confident that it will get there.

I really like that idea. It could be used to alert us to telephone rings, door bells, emergency vehicles, smoke alarms, etc.

The iPhone/iPod's Bluetooth could be used with alerting devices like watches or bracelets.

For hard of hearing people, it would be really nice if we could customize the acoustic output depending on the different ways that the user listens to the phone. Sometimes we might listen to it using earphones and other times we'll listen to it using a hearing aid with a particular kind of accessory. We also want to be able to customize the sound depending on whether we're listening to music, a movie, a cell phone call, or a VoIP call. (Cell phone calls can be very compressed, producing uneven audio and static, but if we could filter out the extraneous noise, we might be able to hear better.)

What would be even better is if we're talking to someone using a lousy cell phone service and if the equalizer could somehow adjust to compensate for that other person's service. (Some cell phone service providers actually don't transmit the low frequency sounds that hard of hearing people need in order to hear speech well. I literally cannot understand the speech of some people merely because their cell phone service severely distorts the way that they sound.)


Dana
 
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