During the year that I was functionally deaf recently, I tried speech-to-text apps for meetings, even bought an Android phone in order to use Live Transcribe, which is supposed to be the best. First, I found that adding the need to watch the phone screen added another "task" to the mix, which didn't help nearly as much as I'd hoped. Second, even Live Transcribe doesn't do well when there are any technical terms, even though it does a fair job of erasing and replacing words it doesn't "understand." Third, the transcription is a little bit behind what you're hearing, so that introduces another "task," following both the words you hear and the slightly later ones you see. Because I was newly at this dismally deaf level, my frustration with attempting to use Live Transcribe was so great that I finally gave up. I also tried Otter, which really chokes on any even semi-technical.

Now that my hearing is back to the level it was before I went bilateral with Meniere's, I am back to simply being quite HOH. Two years ago, I thought I was handicapped because I had to listen very carefully and fill in words I didn't hear, but now that level of HOH seems like a luxury and I'm thankful every day for how much more I can hear than during the year of quiet.

Jump to this post