TranscribeGlass is a new set of glasses powered by artificial intelligence that can transcribe speech in real time and create captions for people who need them.
For mountaineers, success and safety can depend on good communication. A piece in Outside magazine featured two Deaf climbers who have their own communication system when they’re climbing, and they plan to use that system in climbing the highest peaks on each continent.
Today in 1880, the birthday of Helen Keller, the activist, author, speaker, and, on one occasion, a pilot. Never mind what randos on social media have claimed, here's the real story.
Today in 1980, the big U.S. TV networks began regularly using closed caption technology to serve Deaf viewers as well as hearing ones. That alone was a game-changer, but closed captioning has proven useful in some other big ways as well. Plus: in Russia, fans of a certain TV show set in a galaxy far, far away have built a replica of a certain ship that's home to a certain adorable baby puppet.
In the 1980s Deaf children in Nicaragua were sent to a new school that was supposed to help them learn finger spelling. Instead, they built up their own language, now known as Nicaraguan Sign Language. Plus: divers in Mexico find a cave that looked like it hadn't been visited before, only to find a link to civilization thousands of years ago.
The University of Virginia's Disabilities Studies Symposium has produced a version of a 1950s opera called “Dialogues of the Carmelites" featuring both traditional opera singers and Deaf actors performing together and living up to the name of their workshop, "Breaking the Sound Barrier." Plus: a cat played a Theremin on the internet, because why not.
The Soundshirt, from high-tech fashion company Cute Circuit, has embedded sensors that can sense sound and turn it into vibrations. In other words, it helps deaf people feel music. And since we're talking about sounds, have you heard the Tiptree Sneeze, where a trombonist let loose in the middle of a concert?
