RogerVoice

Growing up with over 80% hearing loss hasn’t stopped Olivier Jeannel from living life to the full. As an entrepreneur, he always wanted to do something to make communications more accessible. “I wasn’t looking for solutions, just something to help me,” he says. “When I realised there was more to it, I knew I had to make this happen for lots of other people too.” Olivier created RogerVoice, an app that helps hearing-impaired people make phone calls. The app uses voice-recognition technology to capture speech and turn it into text, enabling the user to read captions as the other person speaks. “My goal was to make it as accessible as possible. I knew Android had the widest reach out there, with over one billion users, which is massive,” he explains. With a design and development team on board, RogerVoice was finished within three months. “It was a great moment. I spent the next 24 hours calling all my friends,” says Olivier. Android and Material Design helped to make the app accessible and intuitive to end users, while Google Play’s beta testing programme enabled Olivier to invite people worldwide to test the app, helping to get it right from the first public version. “We’ve made good progress, but there’s so much more to do,” says Olivier. “The biggest evolution going forward will be accessibility as the major component of development and design.”

My goal was to make RogerVoice as accessible as possible. I knew Android had the widest reach out there, with over one billion users, which is massive.

Olivier Jeannel, Founder, RogerVoice