Special glasses to let hearing impaired see movie captions directly on the eye

We all know how big a role movies play in our life. Whether it is watching a blockbuster with your entire family or enjoying a nice romantic flick with your life partner, but people with hearing disability cannot say the same. Hearing disability is more common than you think, one in every six person suffers from it. It is important to create a distinction between deaf and hearing disable people. Hearing disability can occur because of numerous reasons, like over exposure to headphones. Such people often feel frustrated with the whole cinematic experience. To enrich the movie watching experience for the hearing impaired, Sony is working on a set of glasses that places subtitles right in user’s field of view.

Special movie glasses for HI

Some movies do come out with subtitles designed specifically for hearing impaired people but it is not enough. Production houses have also stated that the broad movie audiences do not like to go to subtitled movies and that is another reason why they are cautious of subtitling. To fix this problem once and for all, Sony, which also owns Columbia pictures is working on a new pair of glasses in its UK lab. The announcement has been lauded by cinemagoers all over the world.

According to the BBC the glasses would be made available in theatres just like 3D glasses by next year. This would result in further expansion in the numbers of moviegoers who previously avoided movies because of their impairment. So without hindering the cinematic experience of those who does not want subtitles, these glasses would really be of huge help to the ones with hearing disability.

The glasses have been tested on a BBC test subject, Charlie Swinbourne (no connection with Jason Bourne). Swinbourne is a British citizen and he himself suffers from hearing impairment. According to his feedback the glasses truly enhance the whole experience. He was a bit cautious about the idea of beaming the subtitles onto the glasses but he also added that the feel was pretty seamless.

Via: BBC/Popsci