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Opening doors for deaf clients | Philadelphia Inquirer | 11/24/2007
Five years ago, the staff at Ken Gan's auto-repair shop told him they needed to find a better way of communicating with customers who were deaf.
"I said: 'Let me go shopping. I'll buy you whatever's out there,' " said Gan, of Rochester, N.Y., which has a significant community of deaf people.
For three months, Gan came up empty-handed. There wasn't anything in the market to facilitate face-to-face communication in a situation such as a shop or office.
So Gan hired some electrical engineers and a patent attorney, and came up with the Interpretype. The small device with a keyboard and display hooks up to another Interpretype or a PC, allowing a hearing person and a deaf person to type messages to each other. It turned out to be such an improvement over passing scribbled notes that Gan gets up to 30 deaf customers a month, up from two or three per month before.
Gan started a business above the shop that has sold more than a thousand Interpretypes to schools, libraries, government offices and businesses. The basic setup starts at $995.
With roughly 1 percent to 2 percent of the U.S. population deaf or hard of hearing, new technologies such as Gan's device are coming into wider use. They allow deaf people to overcome many frustrations in simple commercial situations such as asking: What's wrong with my car?
Or if you want to rent a car. James Barons, manager of an Enterprise Rent-a-Car branch in Rochester, said he has seen interactions with hearing-impaired customers improve markedly after installing one of Gan's text-exchange devices.
"It made the whole transaction of renting a car a lot smoother," Barons said.
Other technologies are also making inroads in bridging the gap between hearing people and the deaf.
Jason Curry and his father founded a company in Independence, Mo., that makes a communications device similar to the Interpretype. The UbiDuo uses two portable units, connected by wireless technology. A pair, which can be folded together, starts at $1,995.
Curry has already sold hundreds since starting sales at the beginning of the year, and expects to sell several thousand next year. He said he is talking with Starbucks Corp. about getting UbiDuos installed in coffee shops.
Curry, who is deaf, said he was able to directly communicate with his wife's family for the first time last Christmas by using one of the devices. Not having his wife interpret was a "life-changing experience" for him, he said.
"Deaf people have a lack of power to sit down across from a hearing person and have a conversation without a third party interpreting for them," Curry said through a sign-language interpreter.
Another technology that has seen even greater growth in recent years is the video relay service, which allows a deaf person to telephone a hearing person using a sign-language interpreter. The interpreter and the deaf person communicate in sign language using a broadband video connection, while the interpreter speaks with the hearing person over a speakerphone.
Deaf people say video relay services mark a major improvement over the previous telephone method available, which involved an operator reading text that a deaf person would type into a device called a TTY - a technology more than 20 years old that exchanged basic text over phone lines using a modem.
Norman Williams, a senior research engineer at Gallaudet University, a school for the deaf and hard-of-hearing in Washington, uses a video phone every day for a variety of calls, including talking to his children's teachers, arranging doctors' visits, or ordering pizza.
"I can't imagine living without it," Williams said in an interview using a video relay service. "Before, we could use TTY, but that's a really slow process. Right now, I can sign, just like somebody is speaking, so it's more like real-time conversation."
Video relay services have come into common use in the last three years or so, and usage is growing rapidly, having jumped from about one million minutes per month in August 2004 to about six million minutes in August of this year, according to the National Exchange Carrier Association.
Alan Hurwitz, dean of the National Technology Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology, said many assistive technologies have been a godsend to deaf people.
"Any technology that allows me to communicate with hearing people instantly, without any barriers - that's amazing to me," Hurwitz said in an interview through a video relay service.
Five years ago, the staff at Ken Gan's auto-repair shop told him they needed to find a better way of communicating with customers who were deaf.
"I said: 'Let me go shopping. I'll buy you whatever's out there,' " said Gan, of Rochester, N.Y., which has a significant community of deaf people.
For three months, Gan came up empty-handed. There wasn't anything in the market to facilitate face-to-face communication in a situation such as a shop or office.
So Gan hired some electrical engineers and a patent attorney, and came up with the Interpretype. The small device with a keyboard and display hooks up to another Interpretype or a PC, allowing a hearing person and a deaf person to type messages to each other. It turned out to be such an improvement over passing scribbled notes that Gan gets up to 30 deaf customers a month, up from two or three per month before.
Gan started a business above the shop that has sold more than a thousand Interpretypes to schools, libraries, government offices and businesses. The basic setup starts at $995.
With roughly 1 percent to 2 percent of the U.S. population deaf or hard of hearing, new technologies such as Gan's device are coming into wider use. They allow deaf people to overcome many frustrations in simple commercial situations such as asking: What's wrong with my car?
Or if you want to rent a car. James Barons, manager of an Enterprise Rent-a-Car branch in Rochester, said he has seen interactions with hearing-impaired customers improve markedly after installing one of Gan's text-exchange devices.
"It made the whole transaction of renting a car a lot smoother," Barons said.
Other technologies are also making inroads in bridging the gap between hearing people and the deaf.
Jason Curry and his father founded a company in Independence, Mo., that makes a communications device similar to the Interpretype. The UbiDuo uses two portable units, connected by wireless technology. A pair, which can be folded together, starts at $1,995.
Curry has already sold hundreds since starting sales at the beginning of the year, and expects to sell several thousand next year. He said he is talking with Starbucks Corp. about getting UbiDuos installed in coffee shops.
Curry, who is deaf, said he was able to directly communicate with his wife's family for the first time last Christmas by using one of the devices. Not having his wife interpret was a "life-changing experience" for him, he said.
"Deaf people have a lack of power to sit down across from a hearing person and have a conversation without a third party interpreting for them," Curry said through a sign-language interpreter.
Another technology that has seen even greater growth in recent years is the video relay service, which allows a deaf person to telephone a hearing person using a sign-language interpreter. The interpreter and the deaf person communicate in sign language using a broadband video connection, while the interpreter speaks with the hearing person over a speakerphone.
Deaf people say video relay services mark a major improvement over the previous telephone method available, which involved an operator reading text that a deaf person would type into a device called a TTY - a technology more than 20 years old that exchanged basic text over phone lines using a modem.
Norman Williams, a senior research engineer at Gallaudet University, a school for the deaf and hard-of-hearing in Washington, uses a video phone every day for a variety of calls, including talking to his children's teachers, arranging doctors' visits, or ordering pizza.
"I can't imagine living without it," Williams said in an interview using a video relay service. "Before, we could use TTY, but that's a really slow process. Right now, I can sign, just like somebody is speaking, so it's more like real-time conversation."
Video relay services have come into common use in the last three years or so, and usage is growing rapidly, having jumped from about one million minutes per month in August 2004 to about six million minutes in August of this year, according to the National Exchange Carrier Association.
Alan Hurwitz, dean of the National Technology Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology, said many assistive technologies have been a godsend to deaf people.
"Any technology that allows me to communicate with hearing people instantly, without any barriers - that's amazing to me," Hurwitz said in an interview through a video relay service.