A new startup is developing a mobile app that will allow the deaf and hearing-impaired to make phone calls.
RogerVoice has launched a Kickstarter campaign seeking to raise funds to develop a mobile app based on their technology and bring it to Android smartphones – and later iOS and Windows Phone.
The technology consists of a VoIP platform integrated with automatic speech recognition, to give users a transcription of conversations in real-time.
The technology already supports most major spoken languages including English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Greek and Japanese. Only the hearing-impaired person needs to have an app installed, not the other party in the conversation.
RogerVoice said the technology has been built on open-source standards, and the transcription function adds a latency of a mere second or less to phone calls. It will be capable of making calls worldwide, but will require a high-bandwidth internet connection.
Features on the future roadmap include integrating text-to-speech, to allow the profoundly deaf who cannot speak the ability to communicate with somebody who is speaking.
Some of the Kickstarter reward tiers include one or three years of unlimited calls using RogerVoice, indicating that it will be a paid service.