Hey guys & gals, and I’m a founder of just created company https://voixware.com and I’m going to publish the first commercial product - a real-time subtitler of computer sound, speech to subs - https://speech2subs.com. I have profound hearing loss and created this app firstly for my own needs.
If you would like to get early access to this program, or just feel interest - please submit this very short form https://forms.gle/WLpabZ2hm63DUfWTA
Lets me present myself.
I started to lose my hearing since childhood (after a traumatic brain injury when I was 3 y.o.). So it was challenging enough to realize myself in real life, I think the readers of this thread know it very well.
Fortunately, since childhood I like computers. My mother (she worked in a bookshop) purchased me books about computers and programming - and I was very impressed. We had no computer at that time, it was 198x years and I was living in the Soviet Union (Russia). In 1989 my father (he was an engineer) built ZX Spectrum 80 computer - he soldered it from contraband electronic details purchased in Odesa (Ukraine). I was 6-7 y.o. and I was really amazed to work with a real computer. Of course, I played the games, but also I learned how to program.
After that time my family purchased a couple of other computers - one soviet in 1994 and then IBM PC compatible in 1996. I was continuing play games and programming with help of paper books. Then I was studied in the university on the Faculty of Applied Mathematics and Informatics. Then I worked in a few IT companies, web-startups, e-commerce projects. Summary at this moment I have almost 20 years of commercial working experience, including taking a part in some startups from a scratch.
Some time ago I was relocated to the US and started work with an American company. It was really hard for me to found a job in the US - with my hearing loss I can’t recognize a word by phone, but no other way exists to apply to a job in the US. My native language was Russian and my brain was trained to recognize Russian speech - not very certain with so hard hearing loss, not in the noise of course, but nevertheless… But for my brain and damaged hearing nervous it’s a problem to chat by phone and recognize foreign languages speech even in real life. So it was a reason I start figuring out how to help myself with call chats.
As a result, I started creating the subtitling application. The idea is pretty simple - my software catches computer sound input and writes the subtitles of speech in real-time. I developed this app for 3 years - and have been using it for my own goals the whole time. With help of this app I was settled in the US (all these rentals, banking, utility calls - I think you know these crazy unlimited chats). And thanks to my app, I was processing the job interviews and successfully got an offer. So this program is proven by my own experience.
Thus I am definitely sure my software is helpful for all hearing-loss communities and improves the quality of life. Phone calls and real-time voice chats are not a problem anymore for people with partial hearing loss, and foreigners with non-excellent listenings skills as well.
I have worked a full-time job until now, and these days I just created my new startup VoixWare - to make my main job the development of this and other voice-related apps.
The speech2subs app is still developing now - I’m adding multi-user possibilities and creating a personal online cabinet, new improvements. I’ll inform the community about releases and I’d like to get feedback about your thoughts about it. I’m planning to open testing for a limited pool of people. Also, I’d like to know the feedback from all the people who read this speech till the rest.
Thanks for reading and don’t hesitate to ask me any questions.