New Cinema Glasses Breakthrough Will Let The Deaf Watch Films With No Subtitles

Those of us that can hear don't understand what it's like to not be able to hear at all or not be able to hear well. My grandfather used to have to turn the TV up as loud as it would go to hear what was being said. The rest of us couldn't be in the same room when he watched. Many shows on TV today can be subtitled if the viewer needs, but few movies in the theater are subtitled.

Sony has been working on a solution that would allow the hard of hearing to be able to watch a movie in the cinema along with the general audiences with no need to have the films subtitled. The glasses are simply called subtitle glasses at this point, they appear to be very bulky and odd looking, but they are able to shoot the subtitles onto the little screens in a green font. BBC News tested the glasses with a man that is hard of hearing.

He said that the glasses work very well and you get the feeling that the subtitles and the film are one, not that the subtitles are close and the film is far away. If these glasses make it into production, there is a long list of things that the tech could be used for. It could for instance give the deaf a real-time transcription of a conversation or be used to show other text for translations as well.

[via BBC]