Illustration by Marley Allen-Ash
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Artificial intelligence and digital technology have brought an enormous benefit to my life. I have had a serious hearing loss since childhood. But everything changed when I bought a pair of state-of-the-art “captioning glasses.”
Cochlear implants have helped me immensely, but as an adult, I slipped into the habit of avoiding talks, plays and concerts. The frustration of hearing a Swiss cheese representation of a talk where holes replace punch lines, jokes and asides, of hearing almost nothing of the dialogue in plays, of hearing just a word or two here and there in song lyrics has defeated me. Until now.
Before, when I attended a talk, a play or a concert, I would ask in advance if there were any accommodations for those deaf or hard of hearing. Usually there were none. I have, however, been offered wheelchair access (it doesn’t help with hearing, I’ve found) and sign language interpretation (like most deaf and hard of hearing people, I don’t sign). The assistive listening devices that I may be offered often don’t work (somebody forgets to turn on the transmission, there is interference or they just don’t work with my cochlear implants).
I am tired of asking for the script of a play to read ahead of time so the text is familiar. Tired of arriving at an auditorium way earlier than everyone else just to get seats at the front so I can lip-read. I’m tired of being asked to turn off my iPhone in a darkened theatre when I am trying to follow along with a script or a speech-to-text app.
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Now I don’t have to rely on anyone else for the feeble accommodations that may or may not be available. I can attend talks, plays and concerts like everyone else who can hear.
The glasses have powerful digital microphones and connect wirelessly to an app on my iPhone that uses artificial intelligence to convert speech to text quickly and accurately.
When I wear my captioning glasses, the spoken words of a talk, the dialogue of a play, the lyrics of a song appear in transparent text on the lower part of my glasses. I can see what is going on while I read what others hear. It’s been an astounding change.
I recently attended a play about Leonard Cohen with the performers singing Leonard’s most popular songs. I wept all through the show. I remembered the teenager I was who was infatuated with Leonard’s poetry and trying so hard, but failing, to hear his songs. I remembered lying on the floor next to my record player trying to hear him and mostly just feeling vibrations in the floor.
But this was wonderful. I could hear/see every word spoken, every word sung. Finally.
Before the play started, I found myself overhearing – or is it overseeing? – the conversations of strangers around me. Do people realize that they can be overheard? I’ve never overheard people like this. I wanted to turn off my glasses and stop intruding. But then I become fascinated by an animated conversation taking place in the row in front of me. I leaned forward to “hear” better. The man I was listening to twigged to his new audience and happily turned around to include me in the conversation.
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Although the captioning glasses I have were developed for those who are deaf and hard of hearing, they can also translate speech from one language to another. That’s a boon for travelers with and without hearing loss. I’m looking forward to trying this feature on my next trip to Portugal.
But as with everything related to artificial intelligence these days, there is a downside. There are other captioning glasses, made by a giant tech company, that not only provide captioning but also allow the wearer to take a video of what they are looking at and send that video to the internet. For example, someone could surreptitiously record a video of a child without the parents’ consent and allow it to be used maliciously by unknown others on the internet. On the other hand, these same glasses can help a blind person navigate their environment or read text by converting visual information into spoken information.
So, yes, this new application of artificial intelligence and digital technology has the potential for both good and bad. I’m happy to use it for something wonderful.
Beverly Biderman lives in Toronto.