 About 1 million people in the US over the age of 5 are considered functionally deaf. And 15% of US adults say they have some trouble hearing. But here's the thing. Most of the US is built around the idea that people can hear and understand words that are spoken out loud without difficulty. Because of that, quite a few people have to deal with obstacles created by a hearing-centric system. But there are people who are thinking about that. And it's their goal to make the world more accessible for everyone. The myth has been that deaf children aren't great readers. But our research findings are trying to dispel that myth. We have mounds of data that say that early sign language exposure will support literacy development in deaf children. This is Melissa Malskoun. She is the director of Gallaudet University's Motion Light Lab. Her team has been working with motion capture technology to create animated avatars that can communicate in American Sign Language. Their goal is to make videos like this one with animated characters that sign to deaf children, especially those who aren't old enough to read closed captioning. Motion capture can build a 3D avatar. We can create animals that sign to deaf children that they would be able to understand. The opportunities are endless. To create these 3D avatars, a member of Motion Light Lab puts on a suit dotted with little white markers. Then that person tells a story in ASL. As they're moving, eight cameras surrounding them capture 3D coordinates for each of the markers. The data then gets sent to a computer program, where members of the lab can make sure that the movement was captured accurately. The most amazing part is that if you know sign language, even though I'm in the dark, you'll still be able to understand me. I've shown my team, I've shown other deaf people, and they're amazed. Even though we're just a bunch of dots, they're able to understand what I'm saying. The potential is amazing. The Motion Light Lab has also been working on a series of storybook tablet apps that cater to children who are deaf. The drawings add a kind of novelty to the learning process. They engage kids in a way that a video of a person signing on their own might not be able to. So for somebody who's opening up the storybook app for the first time, what would they find? The first time children open up the storybook app, they always seem super excited. We have a professional storyteller, a narrator. As she's telling the story, there's animation happening in the background. Now there are some words within the text that are highlighted. So when they click on that highlighted word, the narrator come up, they will sign the word, finger spell it, and then sign it again. That is the way that they can make links between their native language and the written form of English. So by exposing kids early on to sign language, you're also enhancing their ability to read English. Absolutely. They need early exposure to language. When I think about the future, I'm excited because we have access to this technology. There are so many different possibilities. 3D landscape, virtual reality. We want to make sure that we impact a variety of different fields and see this convergence of science and technology and art. So that's what we're doing right here. The project's efforts have yielded apps that appeal to kids who are deaf in a way that a cartoon built for the hearing might not. But what about people who have trouble hearing spoken English and still want to access mainstream TV shows, movies, and music videos? In those cases, closed captioning still reigns supreme. We've worked on a lot of the music videos that come out of a record label called Cash Money Records. For example, we worked on the Bees in the Trap music video. This is John Pelicano. He's the owner of Digital Media Services, a company that does closed captioning for companies like Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, among other things. We've done Star Trek The Next Generation, Beverly Hills 90210. What is the process for closed captioning? We have to transcribe the show, the commercial, the movie to get all the dialogue into a computer. And then we go through a process of placing that on the screen so we don't cover people's faces or graphics. The time frame to do something like that for an hour movie, it probably takes us four hours. Those TV shows that you've mentioned, some of them are kind of older. Are you redoing closed captioning? Not everybody's watching TV on TV anymore. Everybody's watching them on all these devices. So as these programs get sold to the different platforms, they have to be reclosed captioned. The change that John is talking about has to do with an FCC rule designed to promote equal access to all forms of programming. The rule, which was expanded last year, demands eclipsed and full-length episodes of TV shows offered online have to be closed captioned. According to John, the quality of closed captioning has improved quite a bit recently, in part because of this rule. It was just the minimum effort was put in. It really was embarrassing. So that was pretty bad. YouTube also offers closed captioning, which is great, except that YouTube's system is completely automated. That means that despite the platform's best efforts, a lot of the text just comes out as gibberish. We've always done like baby-led feeding where whatever we're eating, they eat. But I think there are definitely lots of times when we're eating something that isn't quite right for them. So if we had something that we're eating and then you could just like steam it or blend it up and it would be a lot easier for them. Let's just say John isn't a fan of YouTube's algorithms. The automated way doesn't work. Even the voice navigation in your car, it never works. It's not accurate. Right. Ultimately, using something that's automated doesn't actually make things that much more accessible because of all the errors. Yes. I mean, and again, if you're willing to accept those errors, I mean, we don't accept the errors, we don't strive to deliver, you know, content that's not right. Close captions can make the world of visual media a lot more accessible. But everyday interactions don't come with rolling text. For people with mild hearing loss, hearing aids can make a big difference. So let's initially insert it into your ear. The hearing aid that was just placed in Sophie's ear is called an Eargo. It's a tiny device designed for people who, like Sophie, have mild to moderate hearing loss. Now, I'm sure you've already noticed, but the Eargo really doesn't look like a traditional hearing aid. That's because it was modeled after a fishing fly. The flexible fibers are supposed to hold the device in place without blocking the flow of air through the ear. The Eargo is kind of an extreme in terms of design, but it certainly isn't alone. According to Thomas Roland, a cochlear implant researcher at New York University, hearing aids are getting smaller, and the people who designed them have fixed a lot of the issues that people used to complain about. One of the classic problems with hearing aids was feedback. You know, you got a microphone and then it's amplified and it's coming out the end and it's then repicked up by the microphone and you get feedback. That's gotten better and better. In digital technology, you can do frequency-specific responses, so you can sort of fine-tune the hearing aid response to a patient's hearing loss. Unfortunately, there's still a lot of stigma tied to wearing hearing aids, but companies like Eargo are trying to change that. Their hope is that if they can convince people that a hearing aid doesn't need to look like a big clunky earpiece to work, then they might be able to make everyday tasks like talking on the phone or enjoying a meal in a noisy restaurant just a tiny bit easier. Normally, this is the part of the video where I tell you that things are getting better and the world is more accessible than ever. And while that may be true, that doesn't actually mean that we live in an accessible world. Our society was built with a very specific type of human mind, and that means that we've overlooked a lot of people's needs and preferences. A world that's truly accessible is one that's adaptable and inclusive. Technology is helping, but if we really want to live in a world that works for everybody, we're going to have to change our mindset.