TranscribeGlass

Disabling hearing loss affects almost half a billion people globally, including 30 million individuals in the US alone. Despite the prevalence of this disability, existing accommodations are extremely expensive ($2-8k for hearing aids or $50k for cochlear implants) or intrusive to conversations (heads-down captioning applications). The lack of accessible accommodations is severely detrimental to the 15% of students (age 6-19) who are deaf/hard of hearing (HOH), and only one in five individuals who could benefit from hearing accommodations actually uses them. Without proper management, children with mild to moderate hearing losses achieve academic performance one to four grade levels lower than their peers with normal hearing, while those with severe to profound hearing loss usually achieve skills no higher than the third- or fourth-grade level. As such, there’s a strong need for a cost-effective solution to address the struggles of Deaf/HOH students who currently receive no disability accommodations.

We’re building the world’s first truly accessible augmented reality (AR) solution for heads-up captioning, relying on natural language processing (NLP) to allow users to better converse regardless of disability, accent, or language barriers. Our solution converts real-time conversations to captions and displays them in the user’s field of vision, allowing them to more easily understand what is being said.  

Our device provides multiple benefits over existing solutions:

1. Cost: Unlike traditional AR headsets which cost a minimum of $600, or hearing aids and cochlear implants ($2k or $50k, respectively) our device is priced at $55 and is aimed at eliminating the cost barrier to communication for Deaf/HOH users. This impact is critical, as factors such as price currently prevent 80% of people who could benefit from hearing accommodations from using them. 

2. Highly adjustable: Our device easily clips onto your existing glasses (or empty frames), and provides multi-axis positioning and focus-adjustment to mitigate eye-strain.

3. Robust and reliable: Our full day battery life and rapid charging allows the device to keep up with the demands of the scholastic experience, within and beyond the classroom. 

Despite our low cost, we provide an uncompromising user experience. Unlike existing captioning solutions that display captions on a phone screen, our app integrates seamlessly with our wearable hardware, providing streamlined access to highly accurate captions in a user’s field of view. This heads-up approach reduces visual dispersion and ensures full engagement with speakers, better environmental awareness, and a more natural communication experience for users.

We aim to target students with hearing loss, a disability that affects 14.9% of children aged 6-19 according to the CDC. Despite the high disability prevalence, only one in five individuals who could benefit from hearing accommodations actually uses them. This drastically impacts educational outcomes, since even a mild hearing loss can cause a child to miss as much as 50 percent of classroom discussion. Socioeconomic factors such as language barriers and insurance type (public vs. private) have a significant effect on pediatric access to auditory accommodations such as educational services, cochlear implants, and hearing aids. This stems from the high cost and highly involved setup/fitting process required for current accommodations. Furthermore, navigating the health care system and communicating with healthcare professionals is often a significant impediment for families of lower socioeconomic status. These families are more likely to miss the multiple follow-up appointments required for fitting current hearing accommodations (cochlear implants and hearing aids). This disparity in equitable service underscores the need for a cost-effective hearing solution that doesn’t require an involved fitting process and can be set up at home. Our device can be used directly out of the box and requires no fitting by a medical professional. It is also significantly cheaper than existing accommodations (100x cheaper than hearing aids and 500x cheaper than cochlear implants), reducing reliance on public insurance and the associated delay in acquisition of auditory accommodations. As a result, our accommodation addresses the needs of the 80% of individuals who do not currently receive any form of treatment for their hearing loss.

Our project was founded out of the desire to improve the educational experience for deaf/HOH students. Madhav’s (TranscribeGlass founder) elementary school friends dropped out of school due to an absence of affordable/effective accommodations for his disabling hearing impairment. His plight motivated Madhav to explore alternative solutions for the deaf/HOH, culminating in a novel augmented reality headset inspired by Google glass. Four years and four prototypes later, we’re on the verge of delivering our first beta device to users, optimized for the Deaf/HOH and at a cost 30x less than google glass. 

We’ve remained true to our primary goal of ensuring student success despite hearing loss. To fully address our user’s needs, we’ve validated Madhav’s vision with 200+ individuals across multiple countries, integrating their recommendations into our product. Our vision has been well-received, garnering us $150k in grant funding and awards, as well as 400+ pre-orders at zero marketing cost. We remain actively connected with our supporters through our site and 600+ member mailing list, where we post regular progress updates and solicit feedback. 

Our advisory team includes faculty at academic institutions such as Stanford and MIT, as well as industry contacts like Chris Patnoe, head of accessibility at Google. Our core team has deep ties to the Deaf/HOH community--co-founder Tom Pritsky has bilateral hearing loss, while Akila Surendran and Aswathy Vinod work/have worked at NISH (India’s National Institute for Speech and Hearing). Together, we’re building a future where hearing loss is no longer a barrier to educational opportunities, regardless of socioeconomic status.

We’ve focused much of our efforts to date on prototyping and user validation of our beta device. We now aim to shift more of our focus to heightened impact and a more robust go-to-market (GTM) strategy, scaling our clientele beyond the 400+ pre-orders we’ve received to date. We believe the MIT solve community can advise us on solidifying our GTM strategy and connecting us to social impact institutions that can improve our global traction. Furthermore, we feel that our hardware product would benefit significantly from the fine-tuned review process by MIT solve experts. Partaking in MIT solve would allow us to scale rapidly while bringing the best product possible to Deaf/HOH users.

We aim to democratize access to hearing accommodations. Our approach enables communication for Deaf/HOH children right out of the box – no uncovered insurance costs, involved fittings/surgeries, or expensive follow-up visits like those required by traditional hearing aids or cochlear implants. Our low hardware costs (100x cheaper than hearing aids and 500x cheaper than cochlear implants) also reduce the financial barrier to entry for users and limit reliance on public insurance, steps which have been demonstrated to improve hearing health outcomes. TranscribeGlass allows users to take control of their conversations, helping solve the global crisis of untreated disabling hearing loss.  

While we began our journey by targeting Deaf/HOH students, we believe our affordable AR hardware can also serve as a broader wearable communication platform that inspires developers to create the next generation of disability accommodation applications. Examples include integration with computer vision to transcribe sign language into text, interpretation of individuals with deaf accents, or virtualization of conversations in a manner more accessible to those with ADHD and attention disorders. We hope that by building a cost effective hardware platform for Deaf/HOH students, we can inspire other teams to design integrated software solutions that can address the needs of additional disabilities. In so doing, we promote a more inclusive world through technology in line with one of the MIT Solve challenge’s core tenets.

In the next year, we plan to gain traction at five schools. We aim to eliminate the impact of socioeconomic status on access to hearing accommodations at these sites by providing a cost-effective captioning solution to students/parents who cannot afford traditional hearing accommodations or the affiliated medical care. In the next five years, we hope to achieve these results across 20% of k-12 schools in the United States, or 25,000 schools.

In the next year, we plan to gain traction at five schools and begin reducing the academic disparity between students with a mild to moderate hearing loss and normal hearing peers from an average of four grade levels to one, as measured by standardized test scores. We will do so by selling our cost-effective wearable headset that allows students to more easily understand classroom educational content.  In the next five years, we hope to achieve these results across 20% of k-12 schools in the United States, or 25,000 schools.

In the next year, we hope to gain traction at five schools and demonstrate reduced feelings of social isolation, increased friendships, and general improvement in happiness for Deaf/HOH students using our device by allowing them to better communicate with their peers. In the next five years, we hope to achieve these results across 20% of k-12 schools in the United States, or 25,000 schools.

We're measuring our traction academically by conducting and planning research studies to validate the impact of our device on users. Thus far we've trialed our device/value proposition with 200+ volunteers (adults/children), including a user interest survey at Stanford University. We're currently in the process of applying for an NIH grant to fund further validation work and demonstrate that our device yields superior educational and social outcomes for students. 

We plan to monitor the way users engage with our hardware, tracking metrics like frequency of use, usage times/locations, and caption accuracy via our app to ensure TranscribeGlass makes a significant positive impact on student's lives and allow us to optimize functionality for settings where users need it most. 

We also track general interest in our product through pre-orders on our site and subscriptions to our mailing list, as well as detailed user surveys. Without any marketing effort, we’ve received 400+ device pre-orders and built up a mailing list of 600+ members. We will continue to monitor these indicators to ensure our user engagement continues to grow as we intensify our marketing efforts.

Our theory of change is as follows:

1. Value proposition: Our headset provides a cost-effective, easy to use solution for students to better understand conversations. 

2. Short term benefits: Deaf/HOH students using our tool can better understand lecture materials and can more easily follow along with what instructors say. Deaf/HOH Students using our tool can better understand their peers and thereby communicate with them more effectively. 

3. Medium term benefits: Improved lecture understanding yields improved learning outcomes, allowing Deaf/HOH students to acquire and retain more information that then translates to improved test performance. Deaf/HOH  students gain social confidence as communication with their peers improves and become more willing to engage in social activities. Consequent positive social interactions continue to improve social stamina and confidence.

4. Long term benefits: With improved scholastic results, Deaf/HOH students gain grater satisfaction from learning and continue to progress academically, closing the achievement gap between them and normal hearing peers. Deaf/HOH students using our device build long-term friendships and self-reinforcing social support structures, reducing the feelings of isolation and unhappiness in school commonly associated with hearing loss. 

By improving access to communication, we allow deaf/HOH students to lead healthier, more successful academic and social lives and circumvent the negative impacts of an untreated disabling hearing loss. 

Our approach bypasses traditional barriers to communication, including those of linguistic differences, hearing loss, or speech impairments. This is achieved through two key innovations. First we apply real time natural language processing to transcribe or translate speech to a more accessible text medium, bypassing the need for expensive auditory accommodations such as hearing aids and cochlear implants. Second, we've developed customized optics and hardware to build the world’s first truly affordable augmented reality display. This allows us to display captions directly in a user’s field of view, unlike popular heads-down phone captioning applications which lead to visual dispersion by forcing users to look away from speakers. TranscribeGlass enables users to see captions of their conversation while looking directly at speakers, reducing visual dispersion and increasing engagement, environmental awareness, and observance of social cues. Such seamless heads-up communication greatly increases the user's understanding of what is being said. 

Finally, we’ve designed novel hardware to ensure comfort and reliability for users. Our headset features an all day battery life and focus adjustment to reduce eye-strain. We’ve also designed a retrofit mechanism that allows it to be mounted onto existing glasses frames, ensuring usability even for those with visual impairments.

By virtue of our focus on disability, we’re committed to promoting improving equity and inclusivity for the Deaf/HOH both within and outside our team. Our co-founder Tom Pritsky has bilateral hearing loss and spent significant time tackling deaf/HOH issues by conducting basic research at Stanford, volunteering weekly to perform hearing screenings, and validating affordable hearing screening technology internationally. We’ve worked to build a diverse advisory team of mentors actively involved in promoting accessibility for the Deaf/HOH, including Dr. Kyle Keane who has taught Principles and Practices of Assistive Technology at MIT and Christopher Patnoe, head of accessibility & disability, EMEA at Google. Another advisor, Matthew Johnston, has been profoundly deaf since birth. As a disability champion, he sees inclusive technology as essential to help drive a socially and economically just world. 

We promote equitable hiring practices with regard to gender, resulting in a team that’s one-third female. We believe you can’t build a product that promotes diversity and inclusion without an inclusive team and plan to continue hiring individuals with diverse disability, gender, and ethnic backgrounds.

We are pursuing a dual B2C and B2B business model. Our B2C business model targets parents of deaf/HOH children directly via our website, third-party e-commerce sites, and marketing/promotion through disability organizations such as the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA). We also plan to sell our devices to schools as a captioning accommodation for Deaf/HOH students to use in the classroom. Revenue would come from both initial headset sales to schools as well as recurring captioning costs. Finally, moving beyond the classroom we’ve received inbound interest from venues such as theaters including regal cinemas and the National Theaters in London. We intend to pursue a B2B partnership with these organizations to supply cost-effective AR captioning solutions for their clients to help them comply with Americans with Disabilities (ADA) laws. 

The revenue model as currently envisaged is a one-time charge to pay for the product (base version, customized and luxury versions), along with physical accessories such as tints for use in different lighting conditions, different attachment options, carry cases, etc. We estimate gross margins of 65% on high volume production of the base version. 

For the longer-term, we will evaluate other/additional revenue models including additional physical products that enhance TranscribeGlass (e.g. microphones and other sensors), as well as a platform model for selling subscription services (e.g. subscription to different caption sources), and third-party software applications that can run on TranscribeGlass (e.g. translation, image recognition).

For schools specifically, we aim to make revenue by selling our device directly to parents (D2C) as well as school administrators legally mandated to provide accessibility solutions to their Deaf/HOH students. Consequently, our ultimate revenue model will likely be most similar to a low-income client model, coming from direct headset sales as well as recurring costs for our captioning service.

Regarding funding, we’re currently applying for an SBIR NIH grant to support further innovation and R&D work on our hardware. We’re also in the process of applying for startup accelerators to fund our initial progress. Long term we aim to raise venture capital to fund key hires, non-recurring manufacturing costs, and advanced research into alternate displays and optics.

We’ve raised $185k in non-dilutive funding through the Pfizer-IIT Delhi Innovation Program, the US-India Science & Technology Endowment Fund (USISTEF), and the SBI Foundation Techtonic funding award. We also have 400+ pre-orders on our site at zero marketing cost, as well as 600 leads on our mailing list. We are approaching manufacturing by late 2022, making us better equipped to handle demand for headsets. Consequently, we’re planning a marketing campaign that leverages social networking (Deaf/HOH influencers and our instagram/FB feeds), disability institutions such as the ADA and HLAA, and outreach to schools/universities across the United States to spread awareness about our product and promote purchasing.