Breaking the communication barriers between deaf & hard of hearing individuals and the hearing world.
bit.ly/jointranscense We're social entrepreneurs tackling the most exciting tech & social challenges of today.

Thibault Duchemin (CEO): M. Eng.UC Berkeley (Data Science/IEOR), French Engineer from Ecole des Ponts-et-Chaussées. Born in a Deaf family, tireless hustler & visionnary.

Skinner Cheng (CTO): Double MS Computer Science Background from USF and Taiwan.

Pieter Doevendans (COO): MS. Innovation Sciences @Eindhoven TU. Pieter makes sure the right product is built for the right people creates durable partnerships.

Origin:
Transcense originated from the experiences and ideas of Thibault Duchemin. Having deaf parents and a deaf sister Thibault experienced first hand how hearing impairment can lead to significant problems and inconveniences in everyday communication.

In September of 2013 Thibault was at the UC Berkeley Startup Weekend where he decided to pitch an idea he had had in mind for a long time. He wanted to find a way to translate Sign Language into speech so that his sister would be able to sign and speak out her closing sentence for het MSc. in Law.

Process:
After the weekend the team was determined to continue their mission. By digging deeper into the deaf and hard of hearing world and doing more research on the technological side, the team learned a lot. From Januari till April 2014 the team is participating in the Lean Launch Pad Class by Steve Blank. During this ambitious and intensive program the team has to do over a hundred interviews to find out everything about the deaf and hard of hearing cultures.

Product:
By doing the numerous interviews over the last couple of months, the team found a very burning need amongst deaf and hard of hearing individuals. It is the need to understand fully what is being discussed in group conversations. Often times it is very hard for deaf and hard of hearing individuals to follow multiple people talking. This can be in social settings like a lunch with friends, or while playing a card game. But this can also be in professional environments, like business meetings, or class discussion sessions.

To address this burning need, Transcense aims to provide a textual support for group conversations. Through your laptop, tablet, or smart phone everything that is said by any person in the conversation is shown in text boxes. We use voice recognition and diarization technologies to make this possible. The application can be supplemented by am external microphone to increase the quality of the captions.