The great minds of our world worked day and night, lived and breathed innovation trying to make their bright ideas of technology for various physical disabilities come to life. We’ve heard of color-blind glasses invented by Donald McPherson, co-founder of EnChroma, for those who can not see all the colors of the world, hearing aids for those with hearing loss, and prosthetics, which were actually created during the late 1800s, for those with missing limbs from injuries, disease, etc. However, have you heard of glasses that can help those with hearing disabilities? You’re probably wondering: how can glasses help people with hearing, it doesn’t make sense? Well, you’ve probably already seen examples of the strategies used to make these glasses. If you have ever been in a Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams meeting, you’ve most likely used the feature where live-captions can be implemented during a discussion.
Now let me ask you a question: can life be subtitled? Be ready to get your mind blown by AR Glasses from XRAI Glass. In case you don’t already know, “AR” is an acronym for augmented reality, which is a technology that overlays a computer-generated image onto a user’s view of the environment around them, creating an enhanced view of their world. It is like seeing the real world through the characteristics that come with virtual reality headsets. XRAI Glass, a UK-based start-up company known for their AR Glasses, was created with the purpose of helping people that struggle with deafness or hearing loss that can’t be solved through hearing aids.
On XRAI Glass’s YouTube channel, a deaf British Sign Language user is shown trying on the AR Glasses for the first time, and we can see the immediate reaction of her face lighting up when she experiences her conversation being live-captioned. The glasses display live captions/subtitles when the user is in a conversation or participating in a discussion with multiple people. Not only that, if the glasses are connected to the XRAI Glass app, different features like an AI assistant, speaker identification, translation for over 75 languages, bionic reading options, audio/transcript recordings, etc. can be used.
If you are a person that has full-functional hearing, you’re likely thinking: what does this have to do with me? Just listen to this: according to “Quick Statistics About Hearing” by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, “About 2 percent of adults aged 45 to 54 have disabling hearing loss. The rate increases to 8.5 percent for adults aged 55 to 64. Nearly 25 percent of those aged 65 to 74 and 50 percent of those who are 75 and older have disabling hearing loss.”
Overall, these statistics show that hearing loss can happen to anyone, and that finding solutions early can be useful. Even though the solution that most people look for are hearing aids, they are not built for everyone. Hearing aids are made to enhance hearing, but they don’t always work depending on the level of hearing loss and how the brain reacts to noise through hearing aids. This is why being open to different options like AR Glasses from XRAI Glass, which can be more expensive than hearing aids, is beneficial in the long run.
Sources
https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/quick-statistics-hearing
