I love it when technology and digitalisation solve everyday problems. When they genuinely help people. This time, it’s about my mum.
She has 12 per cent of her hearing left and has struggled to hear for several years. Now she can barely hear anything at all, even with hearing aids. She’s been on the waiting list for a bone-anchored hearing aid implant for two years. But it takes time, and everyday life carries on in the meantime. This affects her ability to manage day to day.
To get by day to day, she’s been using Google’s transcription app on her phone. It’s worked, but the app picks up every sound around her. That produces a lot of text, and she can’t always keep up with a normal conversation because she has to sit and read to catch up.
So, with the help of the AI tool Lovable and an audio/voice engine, I built an app for her: Hörbar.
Hörbar turns the conversation into speech bubbles. The app recognises who’s speaking and gives each person’s bubbles their own colour. That makes it easier to see who is saying what.
First, Mum records her own voice by saying a couple of phrases. That way, the app can recognise her voice and avoid transcribing what she says herself. She only gets text from the people talking to her.
The app is built to transcribe quickly. Mum can also adjust the text size to make it easier to read and follow the conversation.
This is what I love about technology. Not the technology itself, but what we can use it for. For me, Hörbar didn’t start with AI. It started with Mum and a wish to make her everyday life a little easier, with AI helping someone live a better life.
