With SpeakSee, the deaf and hard of hearing no longer have to avoid group conversations
Australian designed SpeakSee device aims to make conversations accessible for the over 466 million people with hearing loss worldwide. The Dutch company demonstrated its technology with a fully-funded pre-order campaign on Indiegogo in just 10 days.
Sydney, 22 July 2018 – SpeakSee has developed an assistive device for the deaf and hard of hearing consisting of a set of portable microphones that transcribe speech to text in real time using advanced speech recognition technology. The user turns on the microphones, hands them out and reads who says what on a smartphone app.
Australian Co-Founder Joshua Flowers explains: “I always looked up to my Granddad as a kid. He was a talented, warm-hearted, kind man. But as I got older, I saw him increasingly struggle to take part in family conversations. We could no longer have a natural conversation with him. As a child I idolised him, and as an adult, I wanted to know him – but I couldn’t, because of this comprehension barrier.’’
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For those with hearing loss, not being able to take part in a family conversation or business meeting is a frustrating and painful experience. People talking over each other makes it difficult to read lips and background noise further worsens the problem as hearing aids cannot discriminate between wanted and unwanted sounds.
Joshua adds: “Nothing on the hearing aid market was working for my granddad, so I wondered if there was another way we could bridge this divide. After seeing how speech recognition was on the cusp of becoming a truly useful tool, I came up with a basic prototype of SpeakSee for my Granddad to use. We were overjoyed when we were able to conduct a proper conversation for the first time in years.’’
SpeakSee’s state of the art microphone technology ensures that the system can accurately capture conversations, identify different speakers and transcribe it into text in real time, even when there’s background noise.
”It’s small personal moments like seeing my granddad enjoy a conversation that drives our passion to help those with hearing loss. At SpeakSee, we aim to make better tools to bridge these unnecessary divides.”
Join the mission
SpeakSee’s pre-order campaign was successfully funded on Indiegogo in just 10 days, raising over $80,000USD. The campaign is still live, with a pre-order price of $349USD (which equals approximately $470AUD) for a basic set of three microphones and a charging dock. The set can be extended to nine microphones.
About SpeakSee
Founded in 2016, SpeakSee is an innovative assistive technology company with a strong sense of purpose: making conversations accessible for everyone. Sydney based designer, Joshua Flowers was awarded a Young Australian Good Design Innovation Award for the design of SpeakSee in 2016. He is co-founder and lead industrial designer at SpeakSee.
For more information, visit https://bit.ly/SpeakSee
More info
Looking for more information about SpeakSee? Check out our press room for more resources.
To schedule an interview with Joshua Flowers, get a quote or simply ask a question contact us via [email protected] or call +61409817635