In the Isobe family, technology meets talent. With faith and a little help from their friends, life-altering and game-changing ideas have become reality.
Brandon Isobe was about to get baptized in 2017 when an idea hit him.
His father Gerald, a Punahou golf coach for 12 years, had been inducted into the World Deaf Golf Hall of Fame two years earlier. The 1971 McKinley graduate was born deaf and has lived a hugely successful life by any standards. But Brandon knew his dad was frustrated by an inability to understand fully by lip reading.
“I felt like God wanted me to help my dad,” Brandon recalls, “but I didn’t know how because I always thought the only way to help my dad was through medicine or surgery.”
A thought that had nothing to do with medicine came to him in stunning detail. Brandon, who graduated from University of Rochester with a degree in economics, put his iPhone knowledge together with his father’s experience and mother Karen’s advice.
They developed an iPhone app called MyVoice, then MyTalk and finally MyEar, released in November 2017. It allows users to download and immediately transcribe what hearing people say, going from voice-to-text in real time — not “deaf time,” as one deaf reviewer put it.
The Isobes say users can pick up about 95 percent of a conversation, in stark contrast to lip reading, where the percentage is more like 20.
“It’s amazing,” Brandon says, “how God has guided people into our lives to make the product a reality.”
The family also collaborated to produce MyGroup, an “on-demand live interpreter” using an iPhone or iPad. MyEar is geared to 1-on-1 conversations, but has trouble when multiple people talk. MyGroup allows people to get a certified American Sign Language interpreter for $1 a minute to converse with a deaf person in the midst of many people.
“It has been helpful for family discussions and enabled my wife, who doesn’t know sign language, to communicate deeper with my dad for the first time,” Brandon says. “The interpreter gives my dad a voice. Maybe in the future, my dad can use MyGroup for Hawaii golf tournament banquets to understand what is being said.”
Along the way Brandon, who golfed for Rochester and now works as a technical program manager in Network Security for Salesforce in San Francisco, developed the GolfBeats app.
He calls it “a portable metronome for a repeatable golf swing under pressure.”
“I got a lesson in California and the coach emphasized a 1-2-3 tempo,” Brandon says. “When I told my dad about it, it was hard for him to understand what it meant because when he looked down at the ball to start his swing he’s not able to listen to me say ‘1-2-3’ to pace his swing.
“We made GolfBeats so he can follow the 1-2-3 cadence through an iPhone or Apple Watch’s vibrations. I started using it later for myself to practice on the course because my tempo speeds up on the course when there are hazards or on must-make putts.”
Brandon plays little golf since his son was born 10 months ago. In contrast Gerald, who used to partner with current tour pro Parker McLachlin in amateur team events, is out every weekend.
He wants to qualify for the senior flight in the 10th Biennial U.S. Deaf Golf Championship this summer, hoping to advance to the World Deaf Golf Championship. Gerald is closing on 200,000 miles of travel to those events since winning the inaugural national championship in 1982.
He is also tournament chair for the second annual GEM (Georgia Morikawa) fundraising golf tournament this year. The nonprofit serves Hawaii’s deaf, hard of hearing, cochlear implant, senior and deaf-blind community.
He and Brandon hope GolfBeats will also exceed their expectations. App MyEar’s impact was remarkable.
“Our deaf and hearing impaired users report that it (MyEar) has transformed their lives,” Gerald says, “by giving them access and voice to services and treatments hearing people otherwise take for granted.”
Examples he uses are driving opportunities for Uber and Lyft, the ability to understand a dentist — whose face is usually covered with a mask — and communicate with doctors and veterinarians. Work meetings and ordering at restaurants is simpler. Students can be mainstreamed into hearing classrooms. Conversations full of slang, idioms and pidgin suddenly make sense.
One reviewer spoke of the trauma she went through when she lost her hearing at age 36, and MyEar’s dramatic difference.
“I tried it simply because I figured a man who built this for his father did it for real and with all his heart and wanted to change his father’s life,” the reviewer wrote. “Well, he has in just three days changed mine also.”
The Isobes, who went into this “just to help my dad and I,” are surprised at its impact, which has extended to families with older parents comfortable with Apple phones, pads and watches. Now they are working on bluetooth connectivity so people don’t need to be so close to those they are talking to.
GolfBeats is another world, but fits ideally into a family that has taken the game to heart. Brandon’s sister, Brittany, played for Claremont McKenna College.
Brandon says the training aid is ideal for any golfer trying to “bring their game from the practice tee to the golf course,” with the subtle vibrations strengthening focus. Those vibrations allow deaf golfers to “ingrain the right swing positions” and hit consistent yardages with their clubs.
It might not change lives like MyEar, but it could change golf games.
