LAS VEGAS—If you have trouble hearing, a solution could soon appear right in front of your eyes. Smart glasses that show you live captions for the person you're talking to are on the way, as promised by Captify at CES 2025.

Meant specifically for the hard of hearing, the Captify glasses create closed captions from the audio they pick up with dual beamforming microphones, focusing directly on the person in front of you while cutting out any surrounding chatter. The speech is transcribed by your phone, which is connected to the glasses over Bluetooth, and the resulting transcription is projected in front of your eyes in glowing green text only you can see.

I tried out the glasses and was impressed by just how simple and intuitive they are to use. You simply put them on and you can read whatever is being said to you. The transcription seemed very quick, and while some stray words from the crowded event came through, most of the captions I read seemed very accurate. The projected display was also bright and crisp, at least when I wore my own glasses at the same time (prescription lenses will be available with the final product).