Solutions for the deaf in church

[British One]

I am just posting this and wondering if anyone has experimented with, or used voice recognition software in church to produce text on a screen for deaf people.

We have some deaf people in our church who are thinking of leaving if we can't provide solutions to help them understand what is taking place in the service.

We have a couple of people who are trained in sign-language but not enough resource to provide this every week. So I am thinking of buying some voice recognition software, and then taking the microphone output from our mixing desk into a computer that is connected to a screen on the side of the stage.

Has anyone here done that or currently does? Can you recommend good voice recognition software?

I'm thinking even if the software picks up just 60% of the speakers words, its better than nothing.

 

[DaisyDay]

Did you try this out? How did it do?

 

[Willie T]

Why offer them only a partial solution? Wouldn't they get a lot more out of attending a congregation that is already fully equipped to supply all their needs?

 

[British One]

Thanks for the posts, sorry for the delay in replying.

Willie, I don't know what its like in the US, but here in the UK there is not an abundance of well equipped churches. Most offer a loop system for hard of hearing, but very few offer full sign-language capabilities. And we don't want them to go elsewhere, we want them with us, they are our family.

Daisy - not tried it out, but am planning to do so. I have feeling however that it won't work very well unless it trains itself to the speakers voice, and when you have different speakers week in week out that could be difficult.