Taken from Berkeley Engineering
Globally, 360 million people suffer from disabling hearing loss — that’s 5 percent of the world’s population. In the demographic over 65 years old, that number increases to 40 percent. Thibault Duchemin (MEng ’14 IEOR) isn’t one of them, but he understands the many challenges that deaf people face. Duchemin grew up as the only hearing person in a family of four – his mother, father and sister are all deaf. He has always understood the communication challenges that were a daily part of their lives. Now, he’s developed Transcense – a mobile app that aims to end some of the professional and social isolation caused by hearing loss. Transcense offers the first real-time captioning technology for smartphones, making it possible to have group conversations between deaf and hearing people.