Best Apps for Deaf People

In this tech-savvy day and age, it’s not a surprise that most people have a smartphone. With a ton of Apps out on the marketplace, all with different purposes and some are more beneficial than we realise… Here are the Best Apps for Deaf people

Video Calling Apps

Most people with deafness struggle to make audio calls. There’s quite a variety of Video Calling Apps, some just video and others with typing facilities alongside the call. It might be a case of downloading them all to see which one works best for you.

  • FaceTime
  • WhatsApp Call
  • Facebook Messenger Call
  • Skype
  • Glide

Relay Apps

These apps are suitable for making and receiving audio calls with a relay operator between you and the caller. Some apps offer you a choice of speaking/reading/both.

  • Relay UK
  • RogerVoice

For receiving voicemails, this app translates it to text.

  • Voxsci

Relay Apps for BSL users

For British Sign Language users, these relay apps work for voice calls with a Sign Language interpreter between you and the caller.

  • SignLive
  • SignVideo
  • InterpreterNow

Subtitling Apps

There’s lots of attention to accessible videos on social media. The biggest way is through captioning/subtitling videos. These apps are perfect for that job.

  • Clipomatic
  • InShot
  • VideoSubtitle

If you’re uploading to Facebook or YouTube anyway, they have subtitle facilities within the desktop app. The only thing is that you won’t be able to download the subtitled video after you’ve subtitled it.

  • Facebook Subtitles
  • YouTube Subtitles

Entertainment Apps

There are lots of accessible Entertainment Apps on the rise.

  • StorySign

This is a fantastic app for kids who use BSL to give them an accessible story time. It works through certain books where they have an animated character who signs the story for them to watch.

  • BSL Zone

For BSL users or students learning BSL, this is a great app for watching Deaf-led programmes. There’s a variety from comedy, documentaries, movies and so on.

  • YouTube

YouTube has a ‘CC’ (closed captioning) facility on each video. If the YouTuber adds English subtitles to their videos they would show up as ‘English’, if they don’t YouTube have an ‘auto-generated’ version which relies on voice-recognition. It’s not great, but it’s better than nothing!

You can also search for subtitled/captioned videos in YouTube. Search for a topic and click the ‘filter’ button and scroll down to ‘features’ and you will see ‘Subtitles/CC’. It will show all videos with subtitles.

  • Netflix

  • iPlayer
  • ITV Hub
  • All 4 – Channel 4
  • My 5 – Channel 5
  • Subtitles viewer!

Note taking

It’s always handy having note apps on your phone, if you need to write something down, or have a conversation with another person if you can’t quite make out what they are saying.

  • Notes
  • Make It Big
  • Otter Voice Meeting Notes

What’s that song?

If you’re in a restaurant, bar or nightclub and you’re not sure what song’s playing, try one of these apps. They can recognise what song is playing and some apps show the lyrics of that song on the screen too.

  • Soundhound
  • Shazam
  • Musixmatch

Other Apps

  • AccessAble

This app is great for checking out if a local place, venue or business is accessible to you. You can pop your access needs on there. It also offers the facility of letting the venue know you will be visiting them soon and what your access needs are, so they are aware.

  • SignBSL

If you’re learning BSL or not sure what the sign is, this app is a dictionary of BSL terms. Perfect for on the go communication.

  • Braci sound alert

This app records common sounds at home which usually alert you in an auditory way, for example the doorbell, fire alarm, oven timer and alerts you through vibration through the app.

If you have any deaf-friendly apps you’d like to share, please comment below!

1 COMMENT

  1. My mum is now 92 and has been deaf in one ear for a long time and her hearing is t good at all in the other ear. Could you tell me if there is a portal communication devise that has subtitles. I tried wats ap but it was quite poor.

    Hope u can help , thanks.

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