App that enables deaf people to 'hear'

In pleasant news for the hearing impaired, researchers have developed a new app called Transcense which transcribes speech into written words that consequently show up on the smartphone screen.

Transcense is the brainchild of four graduate students from the University of San Francisco and Berkeley, who have all been affected by hearing loss in different ways.

"Transcense brings meaning to the conversation and allows the deaf person to actively engage again," the creators said.

Transcense is the first mobile app that makes group conversations effortless between deaf people and their hearing peers.

Transcense transcribes a group conversation and uses a voice recognition algorithm to detect individual voices and link each of them with a colour, which makes it easy for the app's user to see who is talking on their smartphone screen.

A deaf person can also use the app to speak for them using a digital voice, or to get the attention of all the people present, via their smartphones, Daily Mail reported.