As I virtually watched colleagues and friends jet off to Barcelona last month, I thought about the  interconnected aspects of our world. We can hop on a plane in the U.S. and — within hours — be anywhere in the world. I have never been to Barcelona. In fact, have only been to one other country whose primary language is not English. That is not completely by accident; I have historically been uncomfortable visiting a country in which I do not speak the language. I remember being in Seoul and not being able to place a simple order for coffee with cream; luckily we had people with us who assisted us with the language barrier. So, as I watched some of what was exhibited at ISE, I was keeping a particularly keen eye on assistive listening and translation devices. Of particular interest to me are Apple AirPods, Listen Technologies’ ListenWIFI and Vicom’s SurtitleSeat. I realize that the AirPods were not released at ISE, but I believe the added audio features and ubiquity of Apple devices require they make the list. 

The LiveListen feature on Apple devices is quite old (introduced in 2018), but something that many still don’t know about or use regularly. This feature allows you to use the microphone on your phone as a way to boost the audio of the person you are trying to hear. The weakness here, is of course, that the phone needs to be near the person who is speaking. Most of us don’t want to leave our phone away from ourselves. Conversation boost, on the other hand, essentially makes the AirPods a hearing aid. As with many things with accessibility features, the feature helps everyone, regardless of hearing difficulty. Conversation boost, in particular, uses the microphones in the AirPod to amplify the voice of the person speaking in front of you, while lowering the volume of noise around you.

Speaking of ISE and thinking of the show floor, can you think of an environment where it may be useful to hear a person directly in front of you while canceling out sound around you? I was not there, but I would love to hear how many people were walking around with their AirPods in their ears. Apple continues to take this a step further and uses its Siri language features to build in translation capabilities. The translate app allows you to translate a live conversation and freely communicate without a language barrier. Whether in churches, schools, businesses or hospitals, these features have endless potential. 

Listen Technologies has always been one of my favorite companies in AV, because I have always viewed them as a company that exists for a good social purpose. Their mission statement actually states: “ensuring everyone can hear clearly and share the same great experience.” At ISE, they exhibited their newest technology, ListenWIFI. The equipment includes a server that takes the input source and puts that audio out over the Wi-Fi. The listener uses an app on their phone to receive that audio. This feature allows people to simply “tune in” to the audio without having to ask for devices, channels, etc. So, even if you have hearing difficulties, you can have an experience just like everyone else without having to ask for “special” accommodations. The server, which can take dozens of inputs, connects to receivers. These receivers can be placed across various spaces, and the app will automatically switch to the receiver it is closest to. This means that as someone moves around a building, conference rooms or event venues, their app automatically starts picking up the audio, depending on their proximity to specific receivers. The app also allows both the Android and the iOS operating systems to provide live captioning on the listeners phone. This is useful, if you don’t need the hearing assist, but perhaps want to have a resource to peak at, in case you miss a word. The technology also allows for translation during live conversations. 

Finally, I have to mention the Vicom Surtitle Seat. As Gary and Steph noted in their rePLAY ISE 2025 event (below), this product is still a work in progress, but has an interesting idea. It is a small screen that is on the seat in front of you in any type of an event venue. This screen can display the closed captioning of what is going on in the venue. Theoretically, it, as well, can do language translation. The person who is looking at the screen can control the settings of it, including turning it on/off, which language to display, etc. I predict this product changes significantly over the next few iterations. Perhaps rather than a seat with a screen, it is a magnetic charger/phone holder that allows us to use our own phones, in place of an expensive to maintain and support embedded screen. Apps are much cheaper to develop, replace and upgrade than is the hardware. 

I am thrilled to see many of the technologies finally coming together and providing countless options for people with hearing or language barriers to take part in any event, and experience these events just like everyone else.