Podcare+

Make podcast accessible for everyone

Comment 2

alt text alt text

Backgrounds

With over 100 million people listening to podcasts on a monthly basis, they are gradually becoming a big component of American media trends. However, a sizable portion of the content-consuming public is shut out. At least 37 million adults in the United States have hearing problems, and it doesn't include people who have issues understanding audio information because they aren't native English speakers.

What is Podcare+

People with hearing problems are the most evident beneficiaries of podcast accessibility. A transcript makes a world of difference in whether or not people can consume the podcast, especially hearing-impaired individuals. Podcare+ is a web application dedicated to solving the accessibility problem of podcasts. We aim to removing barriers and providing the benefits of technology for everyone.

Other than our target groups, these people will also benefit from Podcare+:

  • Non-native speakers
  • People who are exposed to loud situations
  • People who can read quickly but can't hear quickly
  • People who are visually impaired
  • People on low connections or poor bandwidth

We also want to benefit people who don’t have disabilities as well as people who do. We want to seamlessly provide the same opportunities for everyone.

alt text

Features

1. Podcast Transcript

Select a podcast episode, and let us transcribe it for you. Fast and simple. alt text

2. Podcast Translate

Available in many languages. You’re non-native speaker? Don’t worry! All podcast episodes can be translated to the top 5 spoken languages (Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, French, Arabic). alt text

3. Podcast Bookmark Snippets

Found something interesting while reading? Bookmark it and save it for later. alt text

Google Cloud Usage

We extensively used various Google Cloud Products in our project:

  • Cloud Translate
  • Cloud Speech to Text
  • Cloud Storage
  • Cloud Functions
  • FireBase
  • Cloud AutoML

User Persona

alt text

Challenges we ran into

Management and Communication across 4 different timezones were tough, but we managed to pull it through successfully.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are really proud to build a fully functional web application that includes a myriad of features to make podcasts more accessible for everyone, regardless of any disabilities one may have. We are also extremely proud to provide thousands of podcasts to listen to, that integrates seamlessly with Spotify and Itunes Podcast list.

What we learned

We learned how to build a full end-to-end web application with Next.js that aims to bring more accessibility to contemporary podcasts.

What's next for Podcare+

In the future, we plan on adding sign language translation into American Sign Language (ASL), British Sign Language (BSL), Irish Sign Language (ISL), and other forms of sign language. Since a large part of our target audience is people who are deaf or have a hard time consuming auditory content, sign language will allow our audience to better understand and enjoy podcasts, along with transcripts, which can be translated into multiple languages. We also plan on adding a feature where virtual AI assistants can communicate their facial expressions since sign language heavily depends on human facial expressions to convey meaning and depth.

We also plan on creating a mobile app for Podcare+ that will open up the possibility to add real-time haptic feedbacks using vibration technology built-in in modern-day smartphones. Haptics adds an extra dimension of meaning and can help convey reactions in a podcast.

Research

We did extensive research into the topic of podcast accessibility and noticed that there is a huge accessibility gap. People with disabilities are unable to consume this form of media due to the current implementations of podcasts across different media platforms like Spotify. Through our research, we got validation of our idea and decided to build Podcare+ to solve this existential issue.

Patrick de Hahn: The podcast industry is failing the deaf and hard of hearing community, October 19, 2020, https://qz.com/1919095/how-podcasts-should-accommodate-the-deaf-and-hard-of-hearing/

Joshua Dudley: Deaf And Hard Of Hearing People Are Helping To Fix The Podcast Accessibility Problem, Feb 26, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuadudley/2020/02/26/deaf-and-hard-of-hearing-people-are-helping-to-fix-the-podcast-accessibility-problem/?sh=68a276fd6b21

alt text

Built With

+ 5 more
Share this project:

Updates