Welcome to this Wild World, Ava.

Communicate Beyond Barriers

Transcense is unveiling Ava, a new communication technology for group conversations between the deaf & hearing worlds.
Request your invitation here

If you enjoy the article, let us know by clicking “Recommend” at the end ☺

I grew up as the only hearing person in a deaf family. My first words were in Sign Language and since then, I’ve always been part of both the deaf and the hearing worlds.

There’s one thing I’ve consistently come across:

A silent, impenetrable, communication barrier
that still sets these two worlds apart.

For 24 years living in-between, I’ve shared the confusion. Observed the isolation. Felt the frustration.

You can be Deaf & signing, hard-of-hearing for years, progressively affected by hearing loss, proud owner of the latest $5000 hearing aids (or not), implanted, non-implanted or lipreader since birth or for months — it doesn’t matter. You’re missing out on what’s being said.

People forget to face you when they talk to you. You’re annoyed / worried when your friends pick the noisy restaurant. And group conversations still give you headaches.

This is the bittersweet symphony playing at Thanksgiving dinners, conferences, and last-minute meetings. Add mustached guests, foreign accents, and participants calling in, and it’s a silent tragedy.

I’m convinced of one thing, though, after working on this problem at Transcense, 24/7 for the past 24 months.

Now is the time that we can break down this barrier.

Today, we’re unveiling Ava: a smart, 24/7 personal scribe for conversations.

Download the Ava app after receiving an invitation, add the people you’d like to chat with, and start communicating beyond barriers.

Ava was made by & for you.
Below is her story — our story.
We hope we’ll soon be part of yours.

Nine months ago, something extraordinary happened.

In mid-October 2014, we put on Indiegogo a video with the first version of our mobile app, and shared it to some friends. Little did we know that in less than a week, we’d become the fastest successful campaign of its category.

More awesome: an incredibly supportive community from all over the world started to come together, shared powerful stories and gave us precious feedback.

So we listened. We listened, like we never had before.

As many pioneers before us, we didn’t get the full grasp of what we were onto at first. A conversation companion app? A smarter captioning service? Or even an alternative to the hearing aid?

The reality was that none of these descriptions matched our vision, which was so different.

Like a pregnancy, it took 9 months of full-time dedication with our team of engineers, scientists and designers to finally bring to life an entirely new experience of connection: the Audio Visual Aid — that we affectionately nicknamed Ava.

Ava empowers your conversations.

1) Ava shows you who says what.

People rely on both hearing and sight in a conversation. If you can’t hear well though, reading lips — despite hard and tiring — remains your best option. With multiple people in the conversation though, things gets exponentially complex to follow. You’re missing both on audio and visual information.

Ava’s voice recognition technology helps you know who spoke and what has been said so you don’t have to do it. Once the participants’ phones are connected, Ava listens & shows you the conversation visually.
Yup, like an Audio visual aid.

2) With Ava, you & the group are one.

Something special happens when everyone around the table is on Ava. Finally, equal access to information! Missed a word or an idea? Probably someone else can see what didn’t show up and just repeats it, before you even asked. Try doing this with hearing aids :)

With Ava, everyone can be at the same level. This was so important for us, and this unique connection is the one reflected by our logo, the &. You will also see it when you create your Ava ID. It helps you pair 1 to 10 people in an instant. It’s close to magic, no kidding.

3) We are Ava. And we’re not your usual assistive listening device.

If you’re still skeptical, we understand. You’ve heard a lot of promises before, you’ve been often disappointed. That sucks. Time for a changeYou should know that we’re different. Not just because we’re hard-working or passionate about technology. We’re different because all our team experienced what you may be going through. It makes us care more about empowering your communications than anything else.

That’s also why we make Ava free to download for all. After the first month unlimited, you’ll have 5 hours every month to use it, with no charge.
Experience it first. Take your time. Go beyond barriers.

We’ll be happy when you are.

We want to help you belong to any conversation you’re participating to.

After hundreds and hundreds of hours discussing with our community, we believe that it’s time to put Ava into more hands.

I’ve been for long the interpreter of these conversations.

It’s time now to pass on the baton to Ava.

Recommend this post if you found it valuable. Thank you so much for reading and supporting us.

Wanna get in touch with us, or on #WelcomeAva? Say hi!