Platform announcements are a lifeline for most passengers and a wall of noise for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Tanvi Jain, a final-year computer science student in Indore, grew up watching her cousin miss train after train because of a last-minute platform change.
Her app listens through the phone’s microphone, recognises announcements in Hindi and English, and shows the key details in large text: train number, platform, expected time.
Tested on the platforms it was built for
Tanvi and two classmates spent months recording announcements at Indore Junction to train the recognition model on real platform acoustics, echoes and all. The app now works offline and supports 14 major stations.
It should not take a stranger’s kindness to know which platform your train is on.
More than 20,000 people have downloaded it. The team is working with a deaf community organisation to add Indian Sign Language video for the most common announcements.
