A computer science student at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, USA has developed an enhanced version of the hearing aid. Nirbhay Narang’s smart glasses transcribes conversations in real time and shows the transcription on the glasses and on a smartphone.

The 25-year-old has formed the company AirCaps to market the device. The benefits and profit potential of AirCaps is huge as there are some 30 million people with hearing loss in the United States alone, according to Narang.

The AirCaps device, however, may not be helpful to Afghanistan’s women.

Hardline Taliban authorities in that country recently imposed a new rule that raised concerns among human rights activists for being oppressive to women. Afghan women themselves were shocked over the latest regulation that is deemed baseless and harsher than the order for them to stay at home.

The country’s minister for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, Khalid Hanafi, has announced through a recorded message that women are banned from hearing other women’s voices.

The new rule reinforces an earlier Taliban order for Afghan women to not speak loudly inside their homes, to prevent their voices from being heard outside.

Women who defy the new rule will be arrested and sent to prison, the Taliban said, yahoo! news reports. Afghan human rights activists warned it effectively bans local women from holding conversations with one another.

“How are women who are the sole providers of their families supposed to buy bread, seek medical care, or simply exist if even their voices are forbidden?” one activist said, according to yahoo! news.

Since Narang’s smart glasses transcribes voices, using it may be self-incriminating for Afghan women as the transcription is proof of their conversation.