A new app for Google Glass provides text captions from the spoken word.

Life can be a little bit easier for those who have lost some or all of their hearing thanks to a new application for Google Glass. The free Captioning on Glass app was created by a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology and does precisely what it sounds like: It provides text captions of the spoken word on the small screen of Google’s wearable display. (Video)

The Glass app has companion software for a connected Android phone so that a person can speak into the phone and have the captions appear on Google Glass. Here’s a short demonstration of how it works:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5eXmShC3WE[/youtube]

CNET says the idea for the app came from School of Interactive Computing professor Jim Foley, who has had trouble hearing; as a result, a team at GIT created the software and then made it freely available for other Glass wearers. In the demo, it appears to caption the spoken word quite accurately and fast. There is a small delay between the phone and Glass, but it’s still impressive.

Google Glass is still a beta product, and at $1,500, an expensive one. How to use it beyond the native features of notifications, communications and picture-taking is something that’s still evolving. It’s going to take a wider range of high-value applications to boost demand for Glass; Captioning on Glass is surely a good example of one.

Photo credit: Android Bump

Via Gigaom