Subtitles for real life?

Welcome to edition 12 of the Made For Us newsletter. There’s a common thread that links last week’s newsletter and today’s post. In case you missed my takeaway last week, I wrote about how innovations designed for specific groups, eg. captions for the deaf community, often end up benefiting a broader population - think subtitles on Netflix, used by more than 80% of its subscribers.

My guest on the podcast this week, Dan Scarfe, has built a company that illustrates the powerful impact of this approach to innovation. And the idea revolves around, you guessed it, captions. 

Dan’s company, XRAI, has developed smart glasses that combine AI and augmented reality (AR) to display real-time subtitles right in front of users’ eyes. It means everyday conversations can be subtitled, just like your favourite TV series.

1.5 billion, and growing

Originally designed to help the deaf and hard-of-hearing community, XRAI’s tech can also translate conversations into multiple languages, widening the potential market for the product.

Not that the original target audience is small. According to the World Health Organisation, there are at least 1.5 billion people with hearing loss in at least one ear and by 2050 that number is projected to rise to 2.5 billion.

Check out the video below to see what one XRAI user had to say about the glasses and read on for this week’s takeaway.

About this week’s guest

Dan Scarfe is the CEO and founder of XRAI, a company using AI and augmented reality to improve accessibility. Inspired by his grandfather’s hearing loss, he developed XRAI Glass, smart glasses that provide real-time subtitles. With a background in IT, Dan transitioned from cloud solutions to assistive technology. Under his leadership, XRAI is expanding into live translation and workplace integration, aiming to make communication more inclusive worldwide.

What we cover in the episode:

• The different use cases for the technology - benefits for the deaf and neurodivergent communities as well as global businesses

• How the product has evolved, thanks to feedback from XRAI’s earliest users

• The highs and lows of building inclusive tech

My big takeaway

Amid all the hype about AI and how it’s going to transform the world as we know it, here’s one idea that remains under-hyped: accessibility could be one of the areas where the true potential of AI is realised. Just in the last few months, you may have seen headlines about AI personal assistants, AI robot housekeepers and AI-powered travel planning apps, but the impact of AI on accessibility is often missing from the conversation. 

As Dan puts it: “AI is going to continue to give everyone superpowers…And what's ironic, or fortunate perhaps, is that a lot of individuals who are accessing this technology for the first time as an assistive device are actually going to have superpowers above and beyond everybody else that they're interacting with.”

Want to hear more? Listen to the full interview on Apple, Spotify or other apps. You’ll find transcripts for all episodes here.

Learn more about Dan Scarfe

XRAI

LinkedIn

If you’ve made it this far, I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy this week’s episode. Know someone who’d like to learn more about this topic? Why not pass on this newsletter to them. They can also sign up below.