Google is starting to roll out two new features for Android phones today, intended to help the estimated 900 million people worldwide who, according to the World Health Organization, will suffer from hearing loss by 2055. The features are actually two Android apps called Live Transcribe and Sound Amplifier.
The Live Transcribe app takes real-world speech and converts it into subtitles in real time using the phone's microphone, while the Sound Amplifier filters, increases, and amplifies sounds in the environment around the user. It boosts the volume of quiet sounds (and loud sounds as needed) and can also be customized with settings and switches, used to reduce noise and minimize distractions in the environment.
Sound Amplifier will be available in the Play Store for Android users, while Google says Live Transcribe will begin rolling out in a limited beta through the Play Store. Both apps will come pre-installed on Pixel 3 devices.
In a blog post today, Google shows how the apps can be used, highlighting the work of Dimitri Kanevsky, a company researcher who has worked on speech recognition and communications technology for 30 years. “Through his work, Dimitri — who has been deaf since early childhood — has helped shape accessibility technologies. One of them is CART: A service where a translator virtually joins a meeting to listen and display the dialogue in subtitles on a computer screen. Dimitri’s partner, Chet Gnegy, saw the challenges Dimitri faced using CART: He always had to connect multiple devices, it was expensive, and each meeting required a lot of preparation. This meant Dimitri could only use CART for formal business meetings or events, not for everyday conversations.”
According to the post, that’s what inspired Chet to work with the company’s Accessibility team to create a tool that could ease Dimitri’s struggles preparing for conversations. “We thought: What if we used cloud-based automatic speech recognition to display spoken words on a screen? A prototype was built, and Googlers were on board to test it. The result is Live Transcribe, an app that takes real-world speech and converts it into captions, in real time, using only your phone’s microphone.”.
According to Google, the app gives people who are deaf or hard of hearing greater independence in their daily interactions. Like Dimitri, who is now closer to his loved ones and is able to easily communicate with his granddaughters without the help of family members.
