WATCH: Google Glass app helps hearing-impaired users with closed captioning

Published October 7, 2014 2:21pm

A new app allows Google Glass to help the hearing-impaired with a real-time closed-captioning feature.

Developed at Georgia Institute of Technology, the app can transcribe spoken words using the microphone of a paired smartphone.

"Captioning on Glass provides real-time closed captioning allowing the deaf or those who are very hard of hearing to converse with others. Your conversational partner speaks into the phone using this application and the speech is converted to text and displayed in the companion Captioning on Glass Glassware," read the description of the app on Google Play.

Work on the app started when School of Interactive Computing Professor Jim Foley learned he had trouble hearing.

He said the system allows wearers to focus on the speaker's lips and facial gestures. Hard-of-hearing people who can understand the speech need not wait for the caption if they can understand what the speaker is saying.

But a wearer who misses a word "can glance at the transcription, get the word or two I need and get back into the conversation," he told CNET. — Joel Locsin/JST, GMA News

Tags: google, googleglass