: Students Innovation Makes Learning Easier For Hearing Impaired, Costs Just Rs 4000 #IndiaNEWS #Delhi In 2017, when Madhav Lavakare was in Class 11, his friend, who suffered from a hearing impairment,

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Students Innovation Makes Learning Easier For Hearing Impaired, Costs Just Rs 4000 #IndiaNEWS #Delhi
In 2017, when Madhav Lavakare was in Class 11, his friend, who suffered from a hearing impairment, had to quit school. When Madhav probed the matter to find out why, he learned that it was because his friend found it painfully difficult to communicate with his peers and teachers due to his condition. As the issue became insurmountable, he had to stop attending classes.
But rather than turn a deaf ear to his friend’s problem, Madhav decided to find a way to help him.
So this year, the 20-year-old has built an innovative TranscribeGlass, an assistive technology device for the deaf, those who are hard of hearing, and the elderly in need of technological aid.
An affordable solution
“My friend suffered from DHH (deaf and hard of hearing), a medical condition where a person suffers from hearing loss. It affects the understanding of linguistic information and impacts performance in an educational environment,� Madhav tells The Better India.
A user testing Transcribe Glass.
Madhav says he was disheartened that his friend had to quit studies due to his condition. “I wanted to make learning easier for him in every possible way. He found it difficult to follow what was being taught in class and communicate with his friends. He needed a solution that could improve his linguistic comprehension,� he explains.
He asked his friend if could use hearing aids or cochlear implants. “But he said both the solutions were expensive, especially the cochlear implants, which can cost lakhs. I asked him about speech-to-text apps, but he said the caption quality was not up to the mark. It also demanded the user to look at the phone every time they wanted to read the captions. It would be inconvenient to understand what was going on in class while having to constantly refer to the app on the device,� he notes.
Madhav began to think of a solution that could translate information into text captions and put them on a heads-up display. “The concept stemmed from Google Glass, where it showed information in the user’s field of vision through augmented reality. But the former was expensive and I was determined to make the solution affordable,� he adds.
He began researching on Google, watching YouTube videos, and teaching himself aspects of programming, mechanical engineering, design, optics, electronics and other aspects for building the device. “I approached a few technical mentors in the process, including Professor P V M Rao at IIT Delhi, two persons from Google in the United States, and two working professionals from the UK and India, both with hearing loss. They gave me encouragement, guidance and essential feedback to understand the challenges faced by people with hearing impairment,� he says.

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