Miss-Delectable
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Technology: Give me a sign and talk to me - thestar.com
When Jo-Ann Bentley’s 70-year-old, hard-of-hearing mother wants to get in touch with family and friends she can download a video conferencing app from an iPhone or log onto the Internet video calling service Skype.
“She gets on Skype and these other packages and she can talk face to face using signing,” said Bentley, director of the communication devices program at the Canadian Hearing Society in Toronto.
“She calls her friends and my brother,” Bentley said, adding that the Apple iPhone 4 offers FaceTime, a video-to-video conferencing application that runs on Wi-Fi networks. Launched last July on the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, FaceTime frees the deaf to communicate through sign language, without email, in real-time and from anywhere in the world.
The app makes the iPhone a top choice in the deaf community. Still, Bentley said the hearing society’s staff of more than 400 is supplied with BlackBerries, which offer the encrypted BlackBerry Messaging text service that’s popular with its employees, many of whom are hard of hearing.
FaceTime and video conferencing programs on tablet computers including the pending Research In Motion Ltd. Playbook and Apple Inc.’s upcoming iPad 2 offer video-conferencing geared to business customers, but extremely helpful to the deaf.
The video services, said Bentley, can be used with a sign language interpreter to allow the deaf to take part in, for example, a job or bank loan interview from their home.
Another device, developed by graduate student Suhyun Kim, is a mobile phone for the deaf called Visual Sound that converts voice to text and text to voice. To communicate, the deaf person feeds text onto a touch screen display, with the text converted to voice simulation for the person on the other end of the phone and vice-versa. The drawback is the time it takes to input the text and convert it to sound, which may deter long-distance calling.
Ultimately, though, ubiquitous mobile phones with built-in cameras and text-only plans are “a blessing” to Canada’s community of some 310,000 deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, said Gary Malkowski, an adviser to the hearing society and former MPP for York East.
It’s a blessing, but only for those who can afford it.
In an interview using a sign language interpreter, Malkowski said high costs of text and bandwidth-intensive video conferencing mobile services in Canada are a major issue in a community where poverty “has a huge impact.”
Malkowski said deaf community leaders are lobbying the Ontario health ministry’s assistive devices program to have mobile devices used by the deaf included in the list of equipment funded by the program.
“They cover TTY’s (the Teletypewriter technology that has helped the deaf communicate over phone landlines for decades,) but they won’t cover BlackBerries,” Malkowski said.
And he said Canada lags behind the United States in implementing video relay services that allow the deaf, hard-of-hearing and speech-impaired to communicate over video phones using a sign language interpreter.
In July 2009, the Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ordered phone companies to implement IP-based text relay services by last July. It delayed a decision on the national provision of video relay services in both official languages for three years.
Malkowski also cited delays in upgrading municipal 911 emergency services to add text messaging for the deaf.
Bentley said the costs have forced many deaf Canadian to use free online email accounts such as Hotmail, and to favour mid-priced Android phones with applications designed for the deaf such as the Google Voice transcription service Silent Time.
When Jo-Ann Bentley’s 70-year-old, hard-of-hearing mother wants to get in touch with family and friends she can download a video conferencing app from an iPhone or log onto the Internet video calling service Skype.
“She gets on Skype and these other packages and she can talk face to face using signing,” said Bentley, director of the communication devices program at the Canadian Hearing Society in Toronto.
“She calls her friends and my brother,” Bentley said, adding that the Apple iPhone 4 offers FaceTime, a video-to-video conferencing application that runs on Wi-Fi networks. Launched last July on the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, FaceTime frees the deaf to communicate through sign language, without email, in real-time and from anywhere in the world.
The app makes the iPhone a top choice in the deaf community. Still, Bentley said the hearing society’s staff of more than 400 is supplied with BlackBerries, which offer the encrypted BlackBerry Messaging text service that’s popular with its employees, many of whom are hard of hearing.
FaceTime and video conferencing programs on tablet computers including the pending Research In Motion Ltd. Playbook and Apple Inc.’s upcoming iPad 2 offer video-conferencing geared to business customers, but extremely helpful to the deaf.
The video services, said Bentley, can be used with a sign language interpreter to allow the deaf to take part in, for example, a job or bank loan interview from their home.
Another device, developed by graduate student Suhyun Kim, is a mobile phone for the deaf called Visual Sound that converts voice to text and text to voice. To communicate, the deaf person feeds text onto a touch screen display, with the text converted to voice simulation for the person on the other end of the phone and vice-versa. The drawback is the time it takes to input the text and convert it to sound, which may deter long-distance calling.
Ultimately, though, ubiquitous mobile phones with built-in cameras and text-only plans are “a blessing” to Canada’s community of some 310,000 deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, said Gary Malkowski, an adviser to the hearing society and former MPP for York East.
It’s a blessing, but only for those who can afford it.
In an interview using a sign language interpreter, Malkowski said high costs of text and bandwidth-intensive video conferencing mobile services in Canada are a major issue in a community where poverty “has a huge impact.”
Malkowski said deaf community leaders are lobbying the Ontario health ministry’s assistive devices program to have mobile devices used by the deaf included in the list of equipment funded by the program.
“They cover TTY’s (the Teletypewriter technology that has helped the deaf communicate over phone landlines for decades,) but they won’t cover BlackBerries,” Malkowski said.
And he said Canada lags behind the United States in implementing video relay services that allow the deaf, hard-of-hearing and speech-impaired to communicate over video phones using a sign language interpreter.
In July 2009, the Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ordered phone companies to implement IP-based text relay services by last July. It delayed a decision on the national provision of video relay services in both official languages for three years.
Malkowski also cited delays in upgrading municipal 911 emergency services to add text messaging for the deaf.
Bentley said the costs have forced many deaf Canadian to use free online email accounts such as Hotmail, and to favour mid-priced Android phones with applications designed for the deaf such as the Google Voice transcription service Silent Time.