Let's face it: It doesn't matter how high quality the video is. Chatting over Skype or FaceTime doesn't do a lot of good if the call is between the hearing and the deaf and only the latter know sign language.
Now, following a successful release in California in April, the SmartVP videophone by Purple Communications is available free of charge to the deaf and hard-of-hearing nationwide, and it manages to solve the signing conundrum.… Read more
Google Glass isn't the only pair of high-tech specs making a splash on the personal viewing scene. Sony Entertainment Access Glasses are about to give deaf moviegoers a way to watch first-run films with closed captions at the theater.
The glasses project closed captions at the bottom of the viewer's eyesight. The text is sent via a wireless system to a receiver that feeds the data to the glasses. Regal Cinemas also is offering an audio headset option for the blind, providing descriptive audio tracks to match what's happening on screen.… Read more
Leaked from today's 404 episode:
- Makerbong? 3D printing is getting stoned.
- Bloomberg's next ban may be loud headphones.
- A petition to change the national anthem to R. Kelly's 2003 hit "Ignition (Remix)."
- 404 Archive News: 404 Redditor fanbanlo posted a link to download 1,217 archived episodes of the show. Canoy took care of a search for all 404 episodes on CNET.… Read more
LAS VEGAS--My stepfather doesn't have the best hearing, and phone calls can be a trial. He tends to crank the speakerphone volume to MAX.
Clarity, a division of Plantronics, is trying to help the tens of millions of people with hearing loss with its new Ensemble phone, which displays real-time captions of what the other person on the line is saying.
Developed with ClearCaptions, the Ensemble is an amplified phone with a 7-inch touch-screen tablet display for the captions.
While there are other caption phones on the market, the Ensemble is being billed as the first of its kind with a tablet interface, and is on display at CES 2013. … Read more
Netflix and the National Association for the Deaf (NAD) have come to an agreement about captions for the company's streaming videos: 100 percent must be captioned by 2014.
The agreement comes by way of a class action lawsuit filed by NAD in 2010 that alleged the streaming service was "failing to provide adequate closed captioning on 'Watch Instantly' streaming video programming," and therefore was in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
After back-and-forth between the lawyers -- and Netflix working to get the case thrown out -- the two sides finally settled this week.
"We … Read more
You might think you can't have a phone conversation with someone who's deaf, but Dimitri Kanevsky would not only disagree, he'd prove you wrong.
Deaf since he was 3, Kanevsky has hardly let his disability get in the way of progress -- or success. Born in the Soviet Union, he eventually emigrated, first to Israel, and then to the United States, and went on to become a research staff member in the speech and language algorithms department at IBM's Thomas Watson Research Center.
On Monday, Kanevsky and 13 others were honored at the White House in … Read more
Cochlear implants, which help 220,000 deaf people around the world hear, come with a few unfortunate side effects.
Because the implants also consist of external parts (the mic, a speech processor, and a radio transmitter coil) worn rather conspicuously behind the ear, users are often unable to swim or wear helmets comfortably, must fully rely on a microphone exposed to the elements, and have to deal with appearing at least somewhat handicapped.
So an electrical engineer at the University of Utah has developed a prototype that moves all these external parts into the middle ear, allowing cochlear implants to … Read more
"The laughter felt loud," said Sarah Churman.
It's impossible for anyone who isn't deaf to even imagine how it might feel to hear laughter for the first time. Or, indeed, your own voice.
Yet Churman's husband decided to film the moment. He then posted it to YouTube.
In the notes to the video, Churman explained that hearing aids only help so much. Eight weeks ago, however, she was given an Esteem implant, made by Envoy Medical.
The device itself is placed behind the ear and no part of it is visible. It doesn't have … Read more
Netflix has been sued by the National Association of the Deaf for failing to offer closed-captioning on enough of its streaming content.
In a lawsuit (PDF) filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the district of Massachusetts, the NAD alleges that Netflix is in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act by not providing captions for most of its "Watch Instantly" streamed movies and TV shows.
Pointing to the approximately 36 million Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing, the National Association of the Deaf says that it and members of the deaf community have already … Read more
A new national study has found that one in five adolescents now suffers some sort of hearing impairment, according to a report Tuesday on NPR's All Things Considered program. That's a scary statistic.
In the August 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers from the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston analyzed federal data collected from national yearly surveys of the health of American citizens. The conclusion is chilling: "The prevalence of hearing loss among a sample of U.S. adolescents aged 12 to 19 years was greater in 2005-2006 compared with … Read more
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