A captioning method for presenting captions to an assisted user (AU) during communication with a hearing user (HU) where the assisted user uses a captioned device and the hearing user uses a hearing user's device to facilitate the communication, the captioned device including a display screen and a speaker for presenting captions and broadcasting the hearing user's voice signals, respectively, the method comprising the steps of during an ongoing call between the AU and the HU, using an automated speech recognition (ASR) engine to generate initial ASR captions associated with the HU's voice signal, assessing at least one caption quality factor associated with prior initial ASR captions generated during the ongoing call, delaying broadcast of HU voice signal to the AU and based on the at least one caption quality factor, adjusting a duration of the HU voice signal broadcast delay.

A method and apparatus that filters audio data received from a speaking person that includes a specific filter for that speaker. The audio characteristics of the speaker's voice may be collected and the specific filter may be formed to reduce noise while also enhancing voice quality. For instance, if a speaker's voice does not contain specific frequencies, then a filter may cancel the noise at such frequencies to ease noise cancellation and reduce processing sound spectrum for cleaning that is not needed. Additionally, the strength frequencies of a speaker's voice may be identified from the collected audio characteristics and those spectrums can be filtered with finer granularity to provide a speaker specific filter that enhances the voice quality of the speaker's voice data that is transmitted or output by a communication device. The audio data may also be output based upon a user's predefined hearing spectrum.

A system for providing voice-to-text captioning service comprising a relay processor that receives voice messages generated by a hearing user during a call, the processor programmed to present the voice messages to a first call assistant, a call assistant device used by the first call assistant to generate call assistant generated text corresponding to the hearing user's voice messages, the processor further programmed to run automated voice-to-text transcription software to generate automated text corresponding to the hearing user's voice messages, use the call assistant generated text, the automated text and the hearing user's voice messages to train the voice-to-text transcription software to more accurately transcribe the hearing user's voice messages to text, determine when the accuracy exceeds an accuracy requirement threshold, during the call and prior to the automated text exceeding the accuracy requirement threshold, transmitting the call assistant generated text to the assisted user's device for display to the assisted user and subsequent to the automated text exceeding the accuracy requirement threshold, transmitting the automated text to the assisted user's device for display to the assisted user.

A method for maintaining contact information in a hearing impaired assisted user's communication device includes the steps of (a) providing a web site for altering assisted user contact information, (b) linking a proxy device to the web site, (c) receiving an identifier associated with the assisted user's device via the proxy device, (d) identifying an assisted user's device via the received identifier, (e) enabling the proxy device to be used to modify contact information for the assisted user associated with the received identifier, (f) starting a timer to time out a sync timeout period, (g) during the sync timeout period, receiving an indication via the assisted user's device confirming a desire to update the assisted user's contact information, (h) updating the assisted user's contact information, and (i) at the end of the timeout period, ceasing an indication that updated data is ready to be used from the assisted user's device.

A computer-implemented method to select a user profile is disclosed. The method may include obtaining, from a first device, a communication attempt at a user device. The method may further include obtaining first device data associated with the communication attempt and with the first device. The method may also include comparing the first device data with multiple data elements of each of multiple user profiles associated with the user device. The method may further include selecting a user profile of the multiple user profiles that includes the data element that matches the first device data in response to the first device data matching a data element of the multiple data elements. The method may also include loading an audio profile for the selected user profile on the user device.

A method may include obtaining information from multiple local devices. The information may indicate a configuration of each of the multiple of local devices with respect to a capability to: receive and broadcast remote audio and display transcriptions of the remote audio. The method may also include establishing a communication session with a remote device and after establishing the communication session with the remote device, obtaining the remote audio from the remote device. The method may further include directing the remote audio to a first local device of the multiple local devices based on the first local device being configured to receive and broadcast remote audio. The method may also include directing transcript data that includes a transcription of the remote audio to a second local device of the multiple local devices based on the second local device being configured to display transcriptions of the remote device audio.

A method and apparatus that filters audio data received from a speaking person that includes a specific filter for that speaker. The audio characteristics of the speaker's voice may be collected and the specific filter may be formed to reduce noise while also enhancing voice quality. For instance, if a speaker's voice does not contain specific frequencies, then a filter may cancel the noise at such frequencies to ease noise cancellation and reduce processing sound spectrum for cleaning that is not needed. Additionally, the strength frequencies of a speaker's voice may be identified from the collected audio characteristics and those spectrums can be filtered with finer granularity to provide a speaker specific filter that enhances the voice quality of the speaker's voice data that is transmitted or output by a communication device. The audio data may also be output based upon a user's predefined hearing spectrum.

Updating filter coefficients during echo cancellation is disclosed. In some embodiments, a communication device may include a processor configured to operate a background filter configured as an adaptive filter, operate a foreground filter configured as a fixed filter; and update the foreground filter with coefficients from the background filter responsive to monitoring a history of both a near-end signal energy and an estimated far-end signal energy for a pre-determined time window in which conditions of each of the near-end signal energy and the estimated far-end signal energy are satisfied.

A method for automatically delaying playback of a message at a captioning device may include obtaining, at the captioning device, a request to playback of the message. The method may also include, in response to the request, automatically delaying the playback of the message at the captioning device in order to allow the captioning system to receive the audio of the message from a beginning of the playback of the audio of the message.

A method may include establishing a communication session with a remote device over a network. After establishing the communication session with the remote device, the method may include obtaining remote audio from the remote device that is provided by the remote device as part of the communication session. The method may also include directing the remote audio received from the remote device to a local device participating in the communication session and to a remote transcription system and obtaining transcript data from the remote transcription system based on the remote audio. The transcript data may include a transcription of the remote audio. The method may further include directing the transcript data to a television for presentation of the transcription of the remote audio by the television such that the transcription of the remote audio is presented substantially aligned with presentation of the remote audio by the local device.