Two new Android apps for hearing impaired

Two new Android apps for hearing impaired

Google is starting to develop two new features for Android phones today, designed to help the approximately 900 million people around the world who, according to the World Health Organization, will suffer from hearing loss by 2055. These features are actually two Android applications called Live Transcribe and Sound Amplifier.

Live Transcribe receives speech from the real world and converts it into subtitles in real time using the phone's microphone while Sound Amplifier filters, enhances and enhances sounds in the user's surroundings. It increases the volume of silent sounds (and as long as possible sounds are needed) and can also be adjusted with adjustments and switches used to reduce noise and minimize distractions in the environment.

Sound Amplifier will be available on the Play Store  for Android users, while Google says Live Transcribe will be released in limited beta through the Play Store. Both applications will be pre-installed on Pixel 3 devices.

In a blog postof the company today, Google shows how applications can be used by projecting Dimitri Kanevsky, a researcher of the company that has worked for speech recognition and communications technology for 30 years. "Through his work, Dimitri - who was deaf in early childhood - helped shape accessibility technologies. One of these is CART: A service where a translator participates in a meeting to hear and display the conversations in subtitles on a computer screen. Dimitri's partner, Chet Gnegy, saw the challenges Dimitri faced with the CART: He always had to connect a lot of devices, it was costly and every meeting required a lot of preparation.

According to the post, that was what inspired Chet to work with the company's Accessibility Team to create a tool that could reduce Dimitri's difficulties in preparing for talks. "We thought: What happens if we use automatic cloud-based speech recognition to display spoken words on a screen? The original was built, and Google officials took part to try it out. The result is Live Transcribe, an application that receives real-world speech and converts to captions in real time using only the phone's microphone. "

According to Google, the application gives people who are deaf or have some hearing problems greater independence in their daily interactions. Like Dimitri, who is now closer to his loved ones and able to easily communicate with his grandchildren without the help of family members.