Eyeglasses That Hear
BUSINESS WEEK ONLINE, April 7, 1999
ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY by John M. Williams
Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: Eyeglasses That "Hear." A new personal captioning system can easily open whole new worlds to the hearing-impaired.
Too often, the deaf and hard of hearing avoid going to movies, museums, and other forums of public entertainment because there are no sign language interpreters to help them understand what's happening. Now, Murray Fisher, an industrial education teacher at Southside Occupational Academy in Chicago, has decided to help his hearing-impaired friends by developing the personal captioning system (PCS).
Fisher, who isn't hard-of-hearing, teaches students with moderate to severe cognitive disabilities. "Hearing-impaired individuals are often left out of many social and community activities because the translation of the spoken word into sign language is rarely available. This situation leaves the individual who is hearing-impaired the choice of either providing their own translator or not attending the event," he says.
While playing volleyball in Morton Grove, Ill., during the 1980s, Fisher noticed one of the competing teams had hearing-impaired players. Murray tried socializing with these athletes by bowling with them. But he says they kept dragging him to captioned artsy foreign films that he didn't enjoy. Nonetheless, Fisher caught on. He saw why his friends wanted the captions. And from these experiences he saw the need for a simple, affordable PCS.
FLOATING TYPE. So Fisher has teamed with Dr. Dan Deignan of MultiMedia Designs, and they're in the demonstration stage of marketing a computer-chip-sized PCS that is built into the frame of a common pair of eyeglasses. The caption is bent into the line of sight through a prism molded into the center of the lens. The glasses have the same kind of lens bank used for prescription glasses, so the lens can be ground to meet the visual needs of individuals.
Fisher hopes to roll out a version of his captioning glasses in the fall. The device works just like a tiny closed-captioning system. When the user looks through the glasses by adjusting the position of the monitor's image, a small rectangular area on the lens carries the captioning. This area can be adjusted to float in any position in relation to the field of vision above, below, or in between.
This system can be used in movie theaters, stage plays, museum tours, sports events, and for personal conversations while traveling. Murray sees a big market in selling the system to movie theaters. Most movie houses don't have their own captioning systems, which are difficult and expensive to provide. Alas, real-time captioning can be annoying for people -- like Fisher at those foreign language films -- who have to sit through a long movie. Today, most movies are captioned after they go into the video market.
"Our personal captioning system can provide discreet captioning for every seat at every showing of a movie. Either turn or tilt your head so the captioning always remains in your line of sight," Fisher says.
TRANSLATOR. Fisher sees universal applications for his PCS. As the program learns the user's voice, the captioning becomes more accurate. He claims the system can even provide captioning in languages other than English so people can enjoy a film in their native language, or provide English captioning to a film produced in an another language.
The PCS can also interact with a computer with voice-to-text software to provide real-time screen captioning, Fisher claims. Fisher and Deignan are also demonstrating a prototype PCS for classroom use. The teacher wears a wireless microphone, and the voice is transmitted to the computer, which then translates the voice to text. The text/captioning is then transmitted wirelessly to a pair of captioning glasses. The student simultaneously reads what the teacher says and sees what he writes on the blackboard. With a laptop computer, the student can use the system just about anywhere.
As the technology becomes widely available, Fisher believes this type of system will open a world of voices to hearing-impaired individuals. With more than 22 million hard-of-hearing people and several million deaf people in the U.S., he sees a huge market.
Fisher certainly thinks he has a winner. "The personal captioning glasses you wear at work to caption a conversation with a co-worker will be the same captioning glasses that bring captioning to a college lecture and captioning to a first run movie," he says. He doesn't know yet what the cost will be for a pair of PCS glasses. Nor will he discuss financing for his venture. Nonetheless, he has set a laudable goal to make the PCS universally affordable to everyone needing them. Indeed, this product has strong support from the deaf and hearing-impaired communities. Fisher can be contacted by phone at (847) 965-6544, or via E-mail at FishrAssoc@aol.com.
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