Kaimuki resident Gerald Isobe, 65, is used to having people simplify their language when they find out he is deaf.

It’s a natural response from people who hope it will make it easier for him to lip-read. But simplification can alter meaning and obscure important nuances. And in any case, lip reading is often inaccurate.

So Isobe’s son, Brandon, worked with him to create an iPhone app, App MyEar, that converts voice to text in real time, allowing him to read almost every word of what someone says when speaking at a normal pace.

The experience has been revolutionary for the elder Isobe, who was born profoundly deaf. A financial management analyst at Pearl Harbor, he is fluent in sign language, but most people are not. The app helps bridge communication gaps, not just with strangers, but even with relatives.

Brandon Isobe, a product manager for a technology company based in San Francisco, recalls his father’s reaction when they tried the app and he discovered the details and range of vocabulary he had been missing.

“The big ‘aha’ moment came, we knew we had something, when my dad looked at me and said, ‘This is how you always speak? Wow — I didn’t know that people spoke this way. I thought everyone spoke in the way that everyone speaks to me. I would never have known that without the app.’”

“That was a pretty cool moment,” he added. “Even within my family we would use simple English because we relied a lot on lip reading. But lip reading is only 20 percent accurate.”

The app, released last month, is handy for encounters with shopkeepers, doctors, friends and colleagues. It works best using the microphone that is built into iPhone headsets but also can be used with the speaker-phone function. The app builds on the iPhone’s voice dictation technology and can be used only on iOS devices. It runs for up to an hour, so it can be used to “hear” speeches and presentations.

The Isobes created the app for their own use, but word has spread as far as Italy. It was released last month and is $9.99 at the App Store with free updates for life, with versions in Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese and Korean.

“I am so grateful that my son was able to develop this app,” Gerald Isobe said. “It’s been wonderful. I think it may be beneficial for those who are deaf or hard of hearing or use a cochlear implant. They no longer have to ask, What are you talking about? If the interpreter doesn’t show up, they’ve got something to fall back on. It might improve communication with deaf people, which is a huge issue.”

App MyEar works in one direction, allowing the deaf person to read what someone else is saying. Isobe can respond verbally and with sign language, or by texting on his phone.

The app isn’t perfect. Words like “stock” can be rendered as “stuck,” for example.

But it is a great supplement to lip reading, he said. A free app, MyTalk, the Isobes developed allows a deaf person to prerecord 10 statements to be played aloud as needed.

Isobe has struggled through many moments, even as an adult, when lip reading would go awry, like the time when people kept pointing at a man and saying “ball.”

“I had no idea what they meant when they said ‘ball,’” he said through a sign language interpreter. “But in actuality they were trying to introduce me to Paul. Solely relying on lip-reading, it was impossible to distinguish. It led to a lot of misunderstanding.”

He grew up at a time when kids like him were forced to rely on lip reading, attending elementary school at Diamond Head School for the Deaf and Blind.

Isobe was mainstreamed in sixth grade and graduated from McKinley High School in the top third of his class, by working “three times as hard” and with help from volunteer note-takers. It wasn’t until he went to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at the Rochester Institute of Technology that he was exposed to sign language. He has done his best to spread that gift, by teaching American and Japanese sign language to others.

While earning his accounting degree at RIT, he played golf for the university and wound up in its Sports Hall of Fame. He has continued playing in tournaments all over the world, and was named to the U.S. Deaf Golf Association Hall of Fame in 2015. Though golf is a relatively quiet game, he is eager to use App MyEar to catch his playing partners’ comments and jokes.