

An App That Lets You Converse with the Deaf, No Sign Language Necessary - facorreia
http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/14/an-app-that-lets-you-converse-with-the-deaf-no-sign-language-necessary/

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machineghost
Initially I was impressed, but now I worry about the logistic issues in
regards to the fine details.

The main problem with general purpose real-time voice recognition is that
current hardware is simply way too underpowered to accomplish the task. For
instance, running the Dragon 11 SDK on an Intel Atom Z3770 has it about up to
a minute behind transcribing the conversation! So I fear Transcene's approach
is using the inferior Google Speech API which plainly put, sucks donkey balls,
and is no way comparable to the latest Dragon engine. Apple uses the Dragon
engine to implement Siri.

There's also the social burden of needing speakers to install an app on their
smartphones and also actually have a smartphone in the first place. Will this
be a free "remote mic" app such as Dragon 13 provides or does Transcene expect
speakers to pony up the monthly cost as well?

I too think businesses and institutions will not allow this because they need
overpriced ADA compliant solutions due to regulations. An example would be
Interact-AS which is $800 and is essentially a fancy overlay for the Dragon
engine (or Microsoft Speech in the low-end $150 version). Dragon itself only
costs a one-time $99 to $199!

I'm also skeptical there's a viable business model in this. The vast majority
of the deaf are on fixed incomes and not employed, so what is a relatively
expensive $30 a month for app access buying them exactly? It better be a
superior remote client to server transcriptioning experience! What's to stop
Dragon from enabling multiple "remote mic" apps to work all at once with the
mothership PC in their next version, etc.? And if not a client server model,
what are the minimum hardware specifications to get "one second"
transcriptions? A $599 smartphone is a ridiculous and overpriced luxury for
the deaf.

As for Google Glass, it is a non-starter. No one wants to look like an idiot
constantly staring off into their peripheral vision to read text instead of
looking at whoever is speaking -- which is why Google Glass has been such a
massive failure. What is truly needed is spatial aware, augmented reality
where the transcriptions are placed over who is speaking via beaming text onto
normal glasses or directly onto the retina. This technology already exists in
various forms; it is just a matter of a real world implemention into a "killer
app". Transcene, are you paying attention?

Nonetheless, this is a very important step forward that no one else is really
doing, so I'm in for $250... and holding my breath.

~~~
appreneur
Wow nice insight, I am going to try a protype, where a deaf look at the person
on the retina or glass, he can see what he is talking...that's beautiful and
amazing. Yes I love transcense , if they can do good and i believe a retina
display is must for deaf and dump, suddenly imagine their world coming alive ,
where they can experience sound , on retina or glass, it's beautiful real
work.

Keep it up guys at transcense

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brayton
Amazing to see why they are going after this problem. One founder grew up in a
fully deaf family and another founder is deaf himself.

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tsm
I 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).

~~~
siglesias
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.

~~~
kbenson
It's not dismissive, it's inquisitive, and it lays out their reasoning why
they don't understand what's special about this. In asking what's special, it
gives the opportunity for proponents to address those questions specifically
as to why they think it's special and different, so other readers that may
have shared the original opinion get more information.

Your explanation about why you think it's special us useful a good example of
a positive outcome of the original comment. The way you initially denigrate
the question is not.

~~~
siglesias
It's undeniably dismissive. Yes, the first sentence is a question, but "is it
anything more than X?" is a rhetorical flourish meant to imply that the
product is trivially replicated. The next sentence goes on to say that he's
not impressed.

As pg put it:

 _Maybe you think you 're making some sort of important point here. Or maybe
you realize your comment is inane and you think it's witty. But (perhaps
without realizing it) you and the people upvoting you represent one of the
worst forces at work in the world. The people who ridicule new things when
they first appear in incomplete form are one of the worst drags on
innovation._ [1]

1)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4356562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4356562)

~~~
kbenson
I don't think it is, and I think the fact the person begins with a question
asking if their assessment of the technology is correct is integral to that
point.

As a real life example, I was leaning towards the original poster's
interpretation of the product. The reply it spurred helped me see the product
in a different light, and I think it has more merit than I originally did,
even if I'm not sure the technologies in use, or even how they are combined,
is especially new and noteworthy. As is all to often the case, it's the
implementation that matters.

In think my initial opinion was dismissive, the original comment was
inquisitive (if a bit critical, but I see nothing wrong with some light
criticism), the reply it spurred was illuminating, and my resulting opinion
was hopeful. I view that as part of HN's success, not something that needs to
be overly policed.

~~~
tsm
GP here; you've used much better words to mirror my opinion. This being on
Hacker News, my initial thought was that it would be an amazing technical
display. Frankly, it isn't, but the discussion here has helped me realize that
the reason we care about it is because it's an incredibly useful application
of existing tech. That's still great—there's a ton of value outside of
technical wizardry—but it just wasn't immediately clear to me after reading
the article.

~~~
tduchemin1
hi tsm, founder of Transcense here. beyond the impact we want to do, we always
at some point built on top of others/existing technologies. Innovation
definition is tricky. Is it in the technical implementation (an Instagram is
not that complicated after all) or in the productization/distribution to
market? We're humbled to have been posted on HN, not from us. But stay
updated, what's coming next will be even more interesting.

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tmyrden
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.

~~~
TezzellEnt
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.

~~~
Sven7
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.

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post_break
So does it go up to a server to transcribe the audio? Is that why it costs
$360 a year?

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
That's also why most businesses won't be able to use it.

~~~
batbomb
Businesses can already communicate with a deaf person the same way using
humans instead of servers, it's called VPS.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
What does this have to do with the confidentiality issues that come with
sending your full meeting audio and transcripts into the hands of a third
party?

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podjackel
You mean a text message?

~~~
chadgeidel
I thought the same thing - until I read this: "It works by catching
conversations from the voices of different individuals and assigning them a
color bubble so the deaf person knows who said what. It works with a
distributed microphone system on all the devices using the app so that it can
distinguish each person from another."

That's pretty damn amazing IMHO.

~~~
chaf
What makes this better then use assign every microphone to a individual. Is it
possible to be 4 individuals and 2 microphones? Then I would be impressed but
if it have to be as many microphones as individuals then it just seems over
engineered.

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spiritplumber
I swear I read "converse with the dead"...

