SoundWaves came about as an idea to make social media apps such as Twitter (X) and Reddit a more relatable experience for visually impaired users. We thought it might be tiring to hear a screen reader all the time and that recording and listening to audio in the form of mini-podcasts from users would make it feel more natural.

Users can record their voice and upload it to the app from their device. We call these 'Waves' and they can all be viewed and heard from 'The Ocean'. Users can also submit their waves to a specific board for any topic they like, such as 'pets', 'Harry Potter' or anything at all. Once a Wave has been posted, users can also view a transcript of the recording to make the audio still accessible for those who may be hard of hearing. If the app detects explicit language in the transcript, the Wave will be clearly marked as explicit. Comments can also be left on waves. When a user plays a wave, it will carry on playing wherever they are in the app through the 'Now Playing' bar at the bottom of the screen.

We used Typescript, Next.js, React, Tailwind, Node.js and Supabase.

We chose these technologies to allow us to use the Web Audio API and make a progressive web app as well as to challenge ourselves and build on the skills we gained during the bootcamp.

Typescript was challenging to get to grips with as it was similar to Javascript but required us to be much more specific than we would normally be. Sending audio from a users device to our backend was also tough and required lots of battling with blobs to do this successfully. There was also more complexity in getting these audio files back into the app so that users could listen to them due to CORS issues.

We had a great time and really enjoyed working as a group - everybody got on well and collaborated brilliantly.