Article author:
Associated Press
Tali Arbel
New York (AP) — People with deafness have new companions for navigating the world. TV screen and streaming service.
The COVID pandemic disrupted the daily lives of people around the world, but many people with deafness found the resulting isolation particularly difficult. "I can't quite understand if everyone is wearing a mask," said Pat Olken of Sharon, Massachusetts, who had inadequate hearing aids. (The new cochlear implant helped her a lot.)
So when her grandson Balmitswer was streamed in zoom early in the pandemic, the service provided a caption. Long before, Olken turned to Otter, an app created to copy business meetings. She said the app became a "tremendous resource" as she read it with the ceremonial speakers.
Estimated approximately 40 million adults in the United States have long-standing skills in the world of hearing, from Victorian ear trumpets to the latest digital hearing aids and cochlear implants. I have been hiring for a while. ..
However, hearing aids today can cost more than $ 5,000, are often not covered by insurance, and are not useful to everyone. Also, the device does not snap and focus the audible sound so that the glasses quickly correct vision. Instead, hearing aids and cochlear implants require the brain to interpret sound in new ways.
"The solution there is clearly not a universal model and does not meet the needs of many people based on cost, access and many other things. Johns Hopkins University. Frank Lin, director of the Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health, said it's not just a matter of communication. Researchers correlate between untreated hearing loss and a higher risk of dementia. We found a connection.
Inexpensive commercial hearing devices are under development, but so far only about 20% of people who can benefit from hearing devices use hearing devices.
In contrast, captions are usually much easier to access. They have been available on modern TVs for a long time, video conferencing apps like Zoom, streaming like Netflix. More often seen in services, social media videos on TikTok and YouTube, movie theaters, and live art venues.
In recent years, smartphone apps like Otter. Google's LiveTranscribe; Ava; InnoCaption, for phones. Introducing GalaPro for live theater performances. Some people with hearing impairments use human reviewers to verify that captions are accurate.
Other products such as Otter and LiveTranscribe instead rely on so-called automatic speech recognition, which uses artificial intelligence to learn and capture speech. ASR provides spoken transcription accuracy and There is a problem with delays. Built-in bias can also reduce the accuracy of voice transcription in women, people of color, and the hearing impaired, says Christian Volger, a professor at the University of Gallordet, who specializes in accessible technology. He said.
Technical terms and slang can be a stumbling block, but users and experts say that ASR has improved significantly.
Welcome, but none of these solutions are perfect. Toni Iacolucci of New York said she had a conversation. She says her book clubs can be exhausted, even when she's using Otter to transcribe. She said the captions weren't always accurate and could be difficult to catch up with because they didn't identify the individual speaker.
"It worked a little," said Iacolucci, who lost her hearing nearly 20 years ago. After she got home, she had to lie down because she was so tired of trying to chase her conversation. "It requires so much energy." She got a cochlear implant a year ago, which greatly improves her hearing and allows for one-on-one conversations without captions. became. They are still useful for group discussions, she said.
In her statement, she welcomes feedback from the hearing-impaired and hearing-impaired community and can participate in virtual conferences and automatically copy them. He said he offers a paid software assistant that can do it.
Transcription delays can cause other problems. Among them are concerns that conversation partners may be impatient with delays. Richard Einhorn, a New York musician and composer, said: "It doesn't mean that you don't realize that it can be a hassle for others."
Other problems arise. When Chelle Wyatt of Salt Lake City went to the doctor's office, the Wi-Fi there wasn't strong enough for the transcription app to work. "It was to write down gestures and things to ensure that I would receive a written report later, so I knew what was said," she said.
Cinemas provide devices that amplify the sound, as well as glasses and individual screens that display captions in time with the movie. However, they are not always comfortable and in some cases are not properly maintained or simply do not work. Many people with deafness want to captain more movies on the big screen, just as they would when relaxing at home.
Under the new law that came into force in New York City on May 15, cinemas will screen up to four showtime captions per movie, including the most popular times to go to the movies. Mandatory to display on — Friday nights and weekends. Hawaii passed state law in 2015, requiring each movie to be shown twice a week with captions on the screen. AMC, a major movie chain, also states that about one-third of US theaters show captioned movies.
Captions are now available for live performances as well. Some Broadway theaters promote smartphone apps with live performance captions. There is also a separate handheld device that displays captions. The theater also has several performances with "open captions" that everyone can see.
During the pandemic, the transition to online conferencing and school meant that video conferencing services would become a survival tool — but captions came only after a big push. Zoom added live transcription to its free service only in October 2021, but conference organizers must enable them. Google Meet took a quick step in May 2020 to make captions available to everyone for free. Microsoft Teams, a messaging app at work, did so in June.
"We need to subtitle everywhere and people need to be more sensitive," Olken said. "The more I insist, the more people can benefit."
