National Theater in London Offers Glasses with Live Subtitles
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Right now getting people to speak into a phone and getting the text creates a pretty unnatural (and usually short) interaction.
And as a techie I am not too bothered by Google and MS using my data to sell me stuff.
What bothers me much more about is the dark architectural decisions that misguide/divides people or get them addicted to their streams and devices screwing their lives up.
It's not your privacy that's the issue (Well, it is, as a user of the device) - it's also the privacy of the persons speaking with you. Single-party consent for digital recording of audio is a controversial topic.
But it's also the privacy of everyone close enough to the microphone that single processing can extract what they are saying. That's 0 party consent that I'm not ok with for always on devices.
Now this piqued my interest, so I took a look at Wikipedia[1]. Interestingly enough, England seems to allow recording phone calls without notifying the other party as long as it is only for personal use and not made available to a third party, but US Federal law does not seem to have such a stipulation, thus presumably allowing people in one-party consent states to post recordings of phone calls on social media without the other party's consent (unless the state forbids that. It's a bit hard to find concrete information on this), which is pretty troublesome I think. However that is only for telephone recordings and not for private conversations, so maybe the laws are a bit more sensible in that case.
Governments have a lot of work to do and that is part of 'how things should be' for people to be equal. I don't think 'people deserve things' but enabling people to be the best they can is government responsibility.
I'm not even sure which outcome I think I prefer, let alone which outcome is right.
It seems unfair for a hearing person to deny a deaf person the right to "hear" if he has a technological solution available, but it also seems unfair for the deaf person to be streaming everything the hearing person says to the cloud for analysis.
Maybe the deaf person can stream whatever he wants to the cloud, but you can refuse to talk in his presence if you don't want your speech to be streamed to the cloud?
The societal reaction to Google Glass was overwhelmingly negative, because it turns out that people don't want to be knowingly recorded all the time. Throw in some people that are easy to "other" and you have a pretty ugly situation on your hands.
Cochlear implants and hearing aids are available, and do work for people; throwing networking into the mix sounds really unnecessary, in the same way that a smart fridge talking to the internet does.
I completely agree that a speech-to-text tool for the deaf shouldn't be doing any networking, but in a (hypothetical or not) world where the only viable speech-to-text equipment is doing networking, what do we do?
Legislation focused on people with hearing impairments is exclusive and discriminatory. Legislation needs to instead focus on data use and storage.
Hearing loss is socially isolating and has tremendous impact on quality of life and opportunity. Only 20% of Canadians with profound hearing loss have full-time employment; 40% are unemployed and another 40% are underemployed.
Throwing "networking" into the mix, if it brings essentially real-world captions into the world for people with hearing loss, isn't on par with a smart fridge talking to the internet. It's a profoundly life-changing breakthrough that will improve the quality of life for 5-25% of the population that have some degree of hearing loss (2).
1. http://cad.ca/issues-positions/employment-and-employability 2. https://www.chs.ca/facts-and-figures
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/sony-subtitle-glasse...
https://www.121captions.com/2017/10/20/closed-captions-movie...
The market for these type of cybernetic devices is driven primarily by people with accessibility needs; which is ironic, because only then the general population wants access to the same technology.
The economics behind this is pretty straightforward. Firstly, in my states, accessibility is subsidized by the government and health insurance. Secondly, because demand is low, the costs are incredibly high which allows the accessibility solution, whatever it is, to contain high-priced components.
Boston Dynamic's SpotMini is a recent example of a high-priced device designed for people with accessibility needs.
> The theater has bought 50 pairs, at a cost of around $1,050 per pair
So pricey, yes, but who is currently selling anything like this? Things like the privacy of the contents of the display and the bulkiness of the unit are interesting aspects of this technology as applied to other use cases.
Searching for "heads-up display glasses" yields a bunch of actual products of varying appearence. I know AR is all the rage, and that's what most of these products seem to advertise, but even having some limited real-time data seems like it has enormous applications.
1. https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/blogs/blogs-enhancing-experi... 2. https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/your-visit/access/caption... 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzFAO9r7eAo
In another (Light Shining in Buckinghamshire) there were subtitles projected at the front of the room. You could get used to it, but it was somewhat distracting and not ideal. This approach seems much better!
Both plays were incredible, btw. Light Shining in Buckinghamshire blew my mind and I highly recommend picking up a copy if you haven't read/seen it.
Many opera houses have subtitles in the backs of seats. While not as ideal as in your glasses, it is certainly more comfortable, cheaper to buy and maintain, and clean.
I get that you have to glance down now and then, as compared to the glasses, but I really think that's a cost worth living with.
Also, and I'm speaking from sad experience here, it'd be waaaay easier to persuade a sponsor to underwrite branded glasses than it is to solicit donations for an infrastructure project.
Though they may be less robust, if the glasses break you can hand the patron another pair; when the seat-back LCD goes on the fritz you'll have to move them to another seat, which is always disruptive, and not always possible.
Overall, I suspect the glasses end up being much cheaper.
Perhaps I am mistaken and some theaters have gone full xzibit on all the seats.