These Glasses Display Captions for Folks With Hearing Impairments

Smart glasses manufacturer Vuzix has teamed up with a startup called Xander to announce a sleek new pair of glasses that provides real-time captioning on the fly.

The just-teased XanderGlasses are actually a pair of Vuzix Blade smart glasses with some new tech underneath the hood to allow for instantaneous captioning. Obviously, these glasses are being marketed to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, but the technology could help anyone who needs a little clarification every now and again. 

Here's how they work. You don the glasses, and captions are displayed in your field of view in real time. All the technology to achieve this feat are inside the glasses, so they don't require a cloud connection, an integrated smartphone, or WiFi. You just pop them on and let the glasses do their thing. 

"With almost 50 million people in this country alone and 1.5 billion worldwide impacted by some level of hearing loss, the need for products like XanderGlasses is significant, and we look forward to supporting their efforts to roll out their solution this year," said Paul Travers, President and CEO of Vuzix.

These are also standard Vuzix Blade glasses, so you also get a camera, noise-canceling microphone, plenty of connectivity options, and more. Like all Vuzix offerings, XanderGlasses integrate nicely with prescription lenses.

Xander says the glasses launch later in the year, in spring. You can drop a preorder right now, but neither company has released pricing information. It is worth noting that the Vuzix Blade smart glasses that act as the basis for this offering cost anywhere from $1,000 to $1,300.

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