To investigate preferences for mobile and wearable sound awareness systems, we conducted an online survey with 201 DHH participants. The survey explores how demographic factors affect perceptions of sound awareness technologies, gauges interest in specific sounds and sound characteristics, solicits reactions to three design scenarios (smartphone, smartwatch, head-mounted display) and two output modalities (visual, haptic), and probes issues related to social context of use. While most participants were highly interested in being aware of sounds, this interest was modulated by communication preference-that is, for sign or oral communication or both. Almost all participants wanted both visual and haptic feedback and 75% preferred to have that feedback on separate devices (e.g., haptic on smartwatch, visual on head-mounted display). Other findings related to sound type, full captions vs. keywords, sound filtering, notification styles, and social context provide direct guidance for the design of future mobile and wearable sound awareness systems.

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Figure 1. Our Wearable Subtitles proof-of-concept shows how eyewear could benefit people who are deaf or hard of hearing. We explore hands-free access to spoken communication, situational and speaker awareness, and improved understanding while engaged in a primary task. Our lightweight (54 g) 3D-printed eyewear prototype augments the user's perception of speech and sounds in a socially acceptable form factor with an architecture that could enable up to 15 hours of continuous transcription.