

New Closed-Captioning Glasses Help Deaf Go Out To The Movies - septerr
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/05/12/183218751/new-closed-captioning-glasses-help-deaf-go-out-to-the-movies

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m_mueller
In many countries, subtitles are an integral part of watching movies in
theaters. The 3D boom (fad?) lately has introduced a new problem: When
combined with subtitles it leads to lots of headaches, since the subtitles are
usually in a different z-plane than the action. Since my English is good
enough, I've been waiting for 3D glasses with integrated closed captioning,
such that people who don't need them can turn it off. Additionally, many
places are highly multi cultural and freely adjustable subtitle languages will
be very beneficial there. This innovation will then not only benefit the deaf
if applied correctly.

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lemonad
For those who are not familiar with CC — and since most of the comments so far
refer to speech-to-text — CC is more than regular subtitles.

CC often displays contextual information such as what kind of music is played
and how it's played (soft, intense, etc.), sounds that are important to the
scene, the names of out of view character who are speaking, etc.

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scg
Very nice!

Related: I wonder if one could build a speech-to-text Google Glass app that's
usable as a hearing aid in all sorts of situations, not just watching movies.

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scottmotte
I would love to see this. We had 2 deaf hackers compete at our recent Startup
Weekend. An app built on top of Google Glass would have helped them
communicate better with the other participants. Bonus points if there would
eventually be an app to convert sign language to written or spoken text - so
that comparatively fast 2 way communication could happen.

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pgeorgi
Translating a highly context dependent visual language into a slightly less
context dependent spoken/text language with different grammar...

Also, supporting all the different sign languages and their spoken
counterparts since the market is small enough that you better go international
early, unless you want your product cost (close to) five digits a piece like
most accessibility hardware.

You have more problems to solve than "just" isolating the signs (which the
next generation kinect probably could help with) and applying labels to them,
but it's certainly a worthwhile challenge, both in effort and in result.

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sarenji
I've worn these glasses a couple times now. They're unfortunately not great.
They're quite heavy, so wearing it for two hours gives me pains and aches. The
front of the glasses is bulky and presses down hard on the bridge of your
nose. The sides don't open fully, so they're squeezing your head like a vise.
Since I also wear normal glasses, I have to layer them under these captioning
glasses. Friends and I joke about me being six-eyed.

As for watching through these glasses, they use a holographic display for the
captions. Since they are projected directly onto the glasses, I learned very
quickly to keep my head absolutely still so I could read the capions without
getting motion sickness. The brightness and size are adjustable, which means
you can choose from a bright green text and background or fainter levels of
green. I'm not quite sure how the glasses receive the captions to be
displayed, but it's via some sort of wireless technology. In the three
theatres I've watched movies at with these glasses, they drop lines
frequently, which is an exercise in frustration. I assume those two things are
related. These glasses are hard to distribute -- each costs about $1,000, or
so I hear. Not good if you run out and a deaf person needs to watch a movie,
which has happened before.

Rear-view windows have similar problems, replacing wearing something
uncomfortable on your face with wrestling against an adjustable mirror on a
stalk. All in all, I'd say I enjoy open captioned movies in theatres the most
-- where they display the captions directly in the movie.

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shade
The past few times I've been to the movies it's been to Cinemark theaters
since they added the cupholder-based captioning devices to almost all of their
theaters a few years ago. They work well, but as the article noted, they're a
pain because they're out of the line of sight and often don't want to sit
still in the cupholder. When my fiancee and I went to see Les Miserables I
spent pretty much the entire movie holding onto the captioning device with one
hand to keep it positioned where I want it.

We have a couple of Regal theaters near us, so I'm definitely looking forward
to trying this system out as well.

As for the comments on Glass -- yes, a real-time captioning device using Glass
would be a killer app for me, and if it worked at all well it would be a "SHUT
UP AND TAKE MY MONEY" sort of thing. There would be some challenges to deal
with (noisy environments, better speech recognition still -- Youtube's
automatic captions still aren't there) but if they can surmount those, I'd be
extremely interested.

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nthitz
Friend of mine is deaf and hates going to the movies but loves watching them
at home with CC. This is awesome!

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bgruber
Big kudos to Regal/UA here. Descriptive Audio services for the blind in movie
theaters used to be extremely hard to access, with closed-captioning not far
behind. The stars had to align; a movie you wanted to see not only had to be
available with accessibility options, but also in a theater that was outfitted
with the technology. Most multiplexes had the descriptive services available
in a single theater, so if that's not where they programmed the movie you
wanted to see, too bad. (The systems are also frequently broken or not turned
on, and the poor teenagers who staff these places understandably don't really
know anything about it.)

Making this a standard part of movie-going (rather than a special-case) is
making a big difference.

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TheBiv
This is very cool to see a company do good things for under served groups of
the population that don't contribute a giant chunk to the bottom line. Good on
you Regal and Sony!

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csense
From the article:

> as he watched the screen, he simply made up the story in his head

It'd be fun to try this! Watch a movie you haven't seen before, muted without
captions, and just make up a story about whatever's on the screen.

EDIT: I don't mean to minimize the plight of deaf viewers. I think it'd
quickly lose its novelty and start to suck if this was the only way you could
watch movies.

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minopret
Similarly, we've all experimented with not going to the movie theater at all.

I don't want to be barred from theaters, but I don't have a lot of use for
them either. One particularly interesting presentation in movie theaters is
the Metropolitan Opera "Live in HD". In this context I should mention some
visual aspects of opera. Apart from music, opera presents quite a spectacle.
And it's pretty common in opera to display translated lyrics simultaneously
for the benefit of all who aren't well familiar with whatever the language of
the performance may be, such as 18th century Italian.

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ZeroGravitas
Don't these already exist? I'm sure I read about them on a blog years ago.

edit: after going looking for it, it was an older system that first had a
large LED screen on the back wall of the cinema and viewers had small mirrors
on positional stalks which they used to see the captions. A later tech had the
mirror replaced with smaller LCD displays.

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wingerlang
Usually when they go to a website in a commercial like this you see a mouse
pointer clicking. Now it was an iPad and touchscreen. I think this was the
first time I've seen that.

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MasterScrat
Would be nice to watch movies in cinemas when you're abroad too.

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vinnymac
I would pay to experience this as a none deaf person.

