Development of augmented reality speech-to-text glasses as a two-way communication system for hearing assistance

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization, nearly 2.5 billion people are projected to have some degree of hearing loss by 2050, with more than 700 million requiring hearing rehabilitation. Hearing aids remain the primary means of rehabilitation, yet adoption among people with hearing loss (PwHL) may be limited by cost, accessibility, social stigma, and technological limitations affecting user experience [1]. Recent advances in automatic speech recognition (ASR) and consumer electronics have enabled alternative assistive technologies: smart augmented reality (AR) wearables can provide real-time visual access to sound/speech through captions/text displays, with text supplementation showing promise for supporting speech understanding among PwHL in previous research [2]. The present paper focuses on AR speech-to-text glasses: firstly, it briefly reviews available products, discusses user needs and limitations, and finally, proposes a new system architecture that can be configured to address individual preferences and further extended to support two-way communication between PwHL.