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Cell Phones for the Deaf
nitzan writes "Quoting from the article: 'the software translates the voice on the other side of the line into a three dimensional animated face on the computer, whose lips move in real time synch with the voice allowing the receiver to lip read.' Unfortunately this only works with laptops, but a pda version is in the works." The company website has a demonstration.
Still no?
Ok, can you hear me now? Still no?
Ok....
...so now we'll all have to learn how to sign "Turn off your fucking phone, asshole!"
What was wrong with speech to text?
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
I worked with deaf people for a while and they were (and I am sure still are) disappointed that cell phones are not compatible with TTY devices. How difficult is this to do?
This is a fantastic idea which will enable communication for the vast numbers of hearing impaired, however if the web-site is any indication, the technology needs improvement. I'm pretty good at reading lips and I was working pretty hard to figure out what was being said with the sound off.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Being a severely hearing impaired person, I do find the virtual person's "O"'s to be highly disturbing if not graphic. Yikes.
I lived with a deaf room-mate last year. It took me about 2 months for me to understand what he was saying, and took him about the same to get used to my lips. Anytime he meets someone new, its very hard for him to read their lips (i.e. every time a new telemarketer tries to prey on the deaf user). Also, its not just the lips, its the tounge also. It'd probably be easier to use speach-> text software than this stuff....and what about background noise? I doubt this thing works well if not at all.
Someone can say "Pot" and yet with the same lip movement, can also say "My". Men with bushy mustaches are a lip-reading disaster.
For me, I've adapted in my own way: I rely heavily on my hearing aids. That combination of both lip-reading and hearing the audio stream from your mouth enables me to achieve at least a 70% success rate (under ideal conditions, if it's a party atomosphere, fudgeddaboutit). I've had hearing aids since I was 1 1/2, and only with extensive speech therapy can I speak well. I'm one of the few deaf-from-birth people that can do it this well. So, from that perspective, I can speak on a phone (as long as I can understand that mangled audio coming out the receiver, which is 0%).
Why don't they just focus on speech recognition? A great speech recognition phone would enable deaf people that speak to use phones for near real-time conversations. In addition, such technology can also be (easily?) adapted to foreign language translators for tourists.
However, until such technology is available at the consumer level, I'm stuck with two-way text messaging devices like the T-Mobile SideKick.
-Cyc
/.'s 10 Millionth
I thought it seemed a little weird at first, but then I checked out the other demos. When I knew what the words were ("Thank you" in English, German, French, Spanish, and Japanese), I could easily tell what was being said.
I notice a lot of people complaining about improving text-to-speech, which is far more advanced than this technology. Speech sounds come out in a continuous flow. Getting a computer to recognize the breaks between words, properly spell them reliably, etc. is hard enough on a desktop system, much less a PDA. Especially considering in languages like English, where most vowels in unstressed syllables are rendered vocally as "uh".
This system simply has to hear a sound, and immediately display an associated... well, not "grapheme", since this isn't writing... maybe "pixeme". It is the graphical equivalent of attempting to spell perfectly phonetically.
Also, if you didn't notice it, "invisible" sounds that occur on the back of the tongue are indicated by circles on the cheeks (like hard 'g' and 'k'), and nasal sounds are indicated by a darkening of the nose.
All in all, I think this is an interesting idea. It will be even cooler when they can render different faces so the "avatar" resembles the person to whom you're speaking.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
Partly, because speech to text isn't very good.
Speech to text isn't very good because its very hard to turn phonetics into words. Our ability to understand people is very reliant on context. Knowing what's been said helps you understand what's being said.
Some will say that speech to text is getting fairly good in English, which is somewhat true. Obviously, though, there are bigger markets in other languages.
So how does this thing work, if it doesn't do speech to text? It does speech to phonetics, and phonetics to lips.
For example, its relatively easy to understand when someone has said "h -ee- r", but knowing if that's supposed to be "here" or "hear" is quite difficult.
This is why the same software works across languages. "Th" is "Th" in any language, and your single algorithm doesn't have to care.
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
This is clearly a solution for the large population of completely illiterate deaf people, for whom speech-to-text is not an option.
... if you have this software running on a phone then if you are hearing impared you could get real time conversation with the other party without having to go through a human being.
I've spoken with a hearing impared person on a phone before through a TTY system and it is painfully slow. First you have to say your sentence and then they send it. Then the other end needs to read it, type in a response, and then send it at which point it is read back to you. Imagine having a conversation over an Instant Messenger except you're secretary was reading the screen and typing for you. (IM for the blind for example)
I agree that we need better voice to text and text to voice translation. That technology would give use better access for everyone. You could have "hearing" for the hearing impared (speech to text), "reading" for the vision impaired (text to speech), and you could even have "writing" for those with fine muscle control imparement or who are lacking the necessary limbs for various reasons.
But this is an interesting approach to solve one of the three problems.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
Reading this makes me realize that my Lightbulbs for the Blind scheme was not crazy! Bundles of cash, here I come!
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.