MOTIVATION
While new technologies are often used to facilitate regular people’s lives, they
often fail to see their potential in helping disabled people. Augmented reality currently
offers users the opportunity to add virtual information to their real world surroundings in
real time. It also has the opportunity to not only augment the sense of sight, but also other
senses such as hearing. In this sense, augmented reality could be used to offer the
opportunity to complement a user’s missing sense. For instance, augmented reality can be
used to help deaf people in “hearing” what an interlocutor might be telling them, without
needing to know how to read lips or without needing the interlocutor to need to know
sign language by outputting the person’s speech next to their head in an intuitive, easy to
interact with, and easily understandable way. As an addition, such a system can also be
used as a convenient translator by travelers.