An application on a mobile phone or tablet computer or eyeglasses listens to the speech of a profoundly deaf person and interprets it in real time. The voice recognition can be trained to the voice of the profoundly deaf person. A display such as a small tablet display which can be hung around the speaker's neck can present text output by the voice recognition module to allow someone to read the text. The application can then detect speech from the listener and display text converted from the speech to the deaf person through glasses or to a cell phone that is being held by hand or to the tablet, or to a different tablet that the previous listener has hung around his or her neck. In case of the same tablet the text from the listener's speech can be shown upside down so that the deaf person can look down and read the text. Thus, the top of the tablet presents text from speech of the deaf person in the up position, and the bottom portion of the tablet presents text from speech of the listener upside down, to be read by the deaf person.