Oh, I didn't know that! That probably lowers the fun of tinkering with the doodle ;)

Live transcribe? Is that some speech-to-text program to use in live communication?

Well, it looks neat!

It’s an android app that, yes, transcribes speech. I’ve seen good things. Communication has obviously been a problem for me.

The deaf university here in the states helped make it, I think. Or, they gave Google feedback at least.

I previously relied on human court transcribers, and this app has been compared to that in accuracy. Hoping for good things.

That sounds promising! I hope it'll work well for you :)
It probably is based at its heart on technology similar to that used in the doodle, as in, machine learning :)

Yeah! I wonder how long they’ve been working on it...

If my family tests it this week, it would be today or tomorrow. Even if we can’t, I can wait until the summer.

I’ve been deaf for six years. I can wait a few months for better communication. I mean, they’ve been asked to learn sign language for nearly twenty years now. Compared to that, three months is nothing.

Why do you have to wait until summer if you can't test it this week? Will you only see your family again then or is it something about the distribution of the app?

So you haven't always been fully deaf but it was clear that you would lose your hearing over time? Or am I misunderstanding?
Is your family having a hard time with the sign language?

The only person with an android in my family is my brother, Whois usually at college. He’s having a grand time. :D

I was diagnosed with a disease that was all-but-certain to leave me deaf eventually. I was hearing for much of my life, yes.

My family has too much going on, and I suppose adding “learn a new language” is too much. I’m lowkey annoyed, because we *did* have time and I did learn, but it might not matter anymore. Which is good, obviously.

Now that I’m actually deaf, I can see problems with my ASL classes. Or the attitudes/beliefs they encouraged.

Ah, I see, that makes sense! I guess if you try the app on his phone and it turns out to be really good that'd be a good reason to get one for yourself.

That sounds like a harsh experience, living with a sense that you know you'll loose at some point. I can't imagine what that feels like.
I totally understand feeling annoyed that your family didn't use the time they had to make sure they'd still be able to efficiently communicate with you by the time it came to it. But yay for maybe having a technical solution soon!

I have no idea what kind of beliefs are encouraged by these classes, but that sounds fascinating! What are the problems you see with them?

This was a high school language elective. It was good that not dismissing the deaf as lesser was and is encouraged, but it almost fosters a...fetishizing of the language/culture? “Oh, ASL is so beautiful!” etc., which it is, but it’s beautiful like English or any language is beautiful: it serves as communication for a comminuity and its uniqueness is worth celebrating.

Some lessons that were intended to be “fun,” I think, involved translating lyrics to ASL. It’s kind of audist (prejudiced against Deaf culture), implying ASL is only beautiful/fun/etc. when hearing people can ~relate~ to it. It’s almost like providing a Braille reader to a blind person and telling them to watch this movie.

A big deal every year was Deaf Day, where the class students would wear earplugs and pretend to be deaf. I found this offensive because I was actually half-deaf but did not want to provoke a teacher.

The class was also regarded as an easy class, which was a bit off-putting. There are historical reasons for this (signed languages, despite being full languages, are not as established.), but we could have dived deeper into the language and studied regional dialects or the like.

Finally, a personal feud I had: a girl -constantly- talked about her Deaf friends, to the point it felt she had them just to show off what a wonderful and enlightened person she was. She was an “isn’t ASL beautiful?” person and just represented the worst of the class to me.

I do not regret taking the class, but my experiences were mixed.

It helps me to talk about it in a safe environment. <3 So, really, you guys are doing me a favor.

edit: IT WORKS! Live transcribe works -really- well! Exceeded expectations, even. :D