The development of the first Earfy app started in 2014. We started the project because a close friend was losing his hearing and we believed that a "subtitling app" could make his life more comfortable.

Communication between hard of hearing / deaf persons with hearing persons is often complicated. Relying on text interpreters or sign language interpreters is not comfortable. Just putting a smartphone or tablet with a subtitling app on the table would be so much easier. No more booking in advance, no third person at the table and much lower costs.

When we got started, speech to text software was just starting to get faster and more accurate. Just good enough to test our first prototype with a group of deaf and hard of hearing persons. Feedback on the first version of our app was positive, even if there were still quite some technical issues to deal with. Today we can rely on much better speech to text software with accurate and real time results on screen.

In the past few years we developed three versions of the app, improving technology and making the app easier to use.  During this period we stuck to our believe that the app should be reliable and easy to use. This translates in an easy installation, easy interfaces and as few settings as possible.

There is much to do about the pricing of apps like Earfy. We all want them to be affordable to encourage broad use among people all over the world. Therefore we try to keep the price as low as possible.At the moment we offer the app for free.