Seems to leave the hearing impaired party as an outsider that is observing the conversation. Great step forward to giving the hearing impaired a foot in the door, so to speak. I'm curious to see where tech like this continues to develop to create an equal playing field for the hearing impaired within the conversation.
An App That Lets You Converse with the Deaf, No Sign Language Necessary
11–20 of 39 posts
Re: An App That Lets You Converse with the Deaf, No Sign Language Necessary
#12I watched the video...is this anything more than a mashup of groupchat and speech-to-text? Couldn't something similar be achieved with Google's speech to text API and IRC? I would've been impressed if the transcription was amazing, but there are errors in the video ("foreclosure" instead of "surfer culture", for one).
I don't think a small team of people can be better than Google or Apple in building a speech to text technology. However, leveraging the tools available to help the deaf is the main idea - at least at the beginning - I think. Going forward, they will probably focus on their "Leap Motion" part of the project: from signs to text/voice and let big companies improve their text to speech algorithms that they would just use. Because that's where big improvement can be made.
Re: An App That Lets You Converse with the Deaf, No Sign Language Necessary
#13You mean a text message?
You wouldn't have made this comment if you actually looked at the article and saw what the app does.
Still, snarkiness aside, it's worth asking every once in a while if the problem you're solving is something that actually merits an app at all (or, for that matter, a computer).
That said, there does seem to be promise here, as there's a reason we video conference (or talk in person) rather than text-message for everything.
Re: An App That Lets You Converse with the Deaf, No Sign Language Necessary
#14I swear I read "converse with the dead"...
Re: An App That Lets You Converse with the Deaf, No Sign Language Necessary
#15I watched the video...is this anything more than a mashup of groupchat and speech-to-text? Couldn't something similar be achieved with Google's speech to text API and IRC? I would've been impressed if the transcription was amazing, but there are errors in the video ("foreclosure" instead of "surfer culture", for one).
I don't think a small team of people can be better than Google or Apple in building a speech to text technology. However, leveraging the tools available to help the deaf is the main idea - at least at the beginning - I think. Going forward, they will probably focus on their "Leap Motion" part of the project: from signs to text/voice and let big companies improve their text to speech algorithms that they would just us…
The Leap Motion thing is unrelated, from some other group, at least according to the story.
The problem of supporting realtime conversation among multiple people is different enough from voice search that there's scope to differentiate.
Re: An App That Lets You Converse with the Deaf, No Sign Language Necessary
#16I watched the video...is this anything more than a mashup of groupchat and speech-to-text? Couldn't something similar be achieved with Google's speech to text API and IRC? I would've been impressed if the transcription was amazing, but there are errors in the video ("foreclosure" instead of "surfer culture", for one).
A very dismissive and short-sighted comment. The ambition here seems to go beyond the current implementation, to have a "magic" chat view that tracks voices and transcribes them in differing colors automatically and with minimal setup. I laud the effort and encourage the team to play this out for the sake of the hearing impaired. I hope that in the next decade deaf people--and their interlocutors--won't have to hobble together a slew of disparate technologies just to enable a group conversation.
Re: An App That Lets You Converse with the Deaf, No Sign Language Necessary
#17Seems to leave the hearing impaired party as an outsider that is observing the conversation. Great step forward to giving the hearing impaired a foot in the door, so to speak. I'm curious to see where tech like this continues to develop to create an equal playing field for the hearing impaired within the conversation.
My Grandma is slowly losing her hearing - one ear is 100% deaf while her other remaining one is at about 50%. She uses a CapTel speech to text phone with a huge display to understand what is said when people call her. It generally works well, but she only has one in her family room. She struggles to hear especially when there are multiple people speaking and there is background noise. I've learned techniques to improve her comprehension, but it can only go so far (If interested, here's a few: make sure you're looking at them when talking, speak in a 'deeper tone', don't rush your words, continually repeat what was said until they understand, etc).
Almost everyone in the United States has a phone. If I could download an app that runs this program along with my cousins, and have my Grandma use her 'iPad' (Nook tablet) to understand, with the assistance of something like Transcense, that would be amazing. By linking several microphones, they may be able to cancel out background noise and only highlight the specific speaker, and that would be a fantastic advance.
I'm wondering what their current state of Transcense's speech recognition is, however. From the video, it did see like there were some errors. I'm sure a deaf user can understand what was meant to be said using context of the conversation, but in a business meeting a misunderstood word can change the whole meaning of the sentence or message. I've used Siri, Dragon Naturally speaking, et al and while they're good, they're not perfect. Dragon in particular supposedly can be taught and learn the user's unique style of speech, so I'm also curious if Transcence will be going the route of machine learning and NLP.
Re: An App That Lets You Converse with the Deaf, No Sign Language Necessary
#18So does it go up to a server to transcribe the audio? Is that why it costs $360 a year?
I hope that's an option. I could see this being used to transcribe conversations between groups of hearing people, as in meetings and the like.
Re: An App That Lets You Converse with the Deaf, No Sign Language Necessary
#19Seems to leave the hearing impaired party as an outsider that is observing the conversation. Great step forward to giving the hearing impaired a foot in the door, so to speak. I'm curious to see where tech like this continues to develop to create an equal playing field for the hearing impaired within the conversation.
My Grandma is slowly losing her hearing - one ear is 100% deaf while her other remaining one is at about 50%. She uses a CapTel speech to text phone with a huge display to understand what is said when people call her. It generally works well, but she only has one in her family room. She struggles to hear especially when there are multiple people speaking and there is background noise. I've learned techniques to impro…
That's a good set of rules. I'll add one more - keep the sentences short. Some people say a whole lot without having anything much to say.