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Broadband helps the deaf | NATIONAL | NEWS | tvnz.co.nz
Deaf university students can now be connected to teachers all around the world through the wonders of broadband technology.
A new remote interpreter system is helping solve the problem of a lack of sign language interpreters.
For Nirvana Harkin university has just got a whole lot easier.
"It is access for me. It is access to my education; it's the information that I receive. Without this, I wouldn't understand anything that was going on," says the deaf student.
Harkin is profoundly deaf and a shortage of sign language interpreters meant she couldn't take part in class discussions.
"We've had one interpreter here and there have been barriers in that we haven't been able to employ another interpreter to come down to Dunedin," she says.
Now Harkin doesn't need one in Dunedin - she is using the remote interpreter programme, with help from a high-speed network.
Her teachers speak into a microphone, which is heard by an interpreter in Auckland. She signs back to Harkin using a webcam.
The network is so speedy it has been dubbed broadband on steroids
"You are looking at 2GB a second. It would be the equivalent of sending a whole DVD within two seconds, or four CDs within a second. So, this is very fast," says Russell Butson from the University of Otago.
And the possibilities are endless.
"Because of the seamless connection, it opens up the possibility where we can actually have bands working in real time, or music groups working in real time - one in Auckland, one in Wellington, one in Dunedin or Christchurch... We can actually have them all playing instruments at the same time and mixing that material in real time," says Butson.
And people at home could be connected too. While the network's only being used for research and education at the moment the technology could be in New Zealand homes, in about five years.
Deaf university students can now be connected to teachers all around the world through the wonders of broadband technology.
A new remote interpreter system is helping solve the problem of a lack of sign language interpreters.
For Nirvana Harkin university has just got a whole lot easier.
"It is access for me. It is access to my education; it's the information that I receive. Without this, I wouldn't understand anything that was going on," says the deaf student.
Harkin is profoundly deaf and a shortage of sign language interpreters meant she couldn't take part in class discussions.
"We've had one interpreter here and there have been barriers in that we haven't been able to employ another interpreter to come down to Dunedin," she says.
Now Harkin doesn't need one in Dunedin - she is using the remote interpreter programme, with help from a high-speed network.
Her teachers speak into a microphone, which is heard by an interpreter in Auckland. She signs back to Harkin using a webcam.
The network is so speedy it has been dubbed broadband on steroids
"You are looking at 2GB a second. It would be the equivalent of sending a whole DVD within two seconds, or four CDs within a second. So, this is very fast," says Russell Butson from the University of Otago.
And the possibilities are endless.
"Because of the seamless connection, it opens up the possibility where we can actually have bands working in real time, or music groups working in real time - one in Auckland, one in Wellington, one in Dunedin or Christchurch... We can actually have them all playing instruments at the same time and mixing that material in real time," says Butson.
And people at home could be connected too. While the network's only being used for research and education at the moment the technology could be in New Zealand homes, in about five years.