Communication Solutions

People with physical disabilities are gaining new ways to communicate thanks to technological advances. Some of these advances are taking place locally in communities with significant populations of people who, for various reasons, are unable to communicate in standard ways.

 

For example, in Rochester NY a “significant community” of deaf people led to a local auto repair shop owner developing a device to aid communication between hearing and non-hearing people, Associated Press reported.

 

The auto repair shop owner, Ken Gan, got frustrated after looking for some type of device that would help his employees communicate in face-to-face interactions with deaf customers—and was unable to find what he needed. So, he decided to take the task on himself with the help of a team of engineers and a patent attorney, AP said in its report.

 

That was five years ago, and today Gan has sold more than a thousand of his Interpretype (aka ITY) devices to libraries, schools, businesses, and government offices, AP said in its report. The Interpretype (basic model starts at $995) is a device with a keyboard and display that connects to another unit or to a PC, letting a hearing person and a deaf person to converse by typing messages to each other.

 

AP said in its report that between 1 and 2 percent of the U.S. population is deaf or hard of hearing, and businesses like Enterprise Rent-a-Car are looking for ways to serve these customers. The report quoted James Barons, manager of an Enterprise Rent-a-Car branch in Rochester, as saying how much interactions with deaf customers have improved since the business installed an ITY device from Gan.

 

Gan was not alone in seeing a need for a device to help hearing and non-hearing people communicate with one another. Jason Curry of Independence, Missouri developed a similar solution called UbiDuo ($1,995 and up)—two portable units that connect to each other wirelessly, AP noted in its report.

 

AP said Curry is in talks now with Starbucks Corp. about installing UbiDuos in its coffee shops.

 

Technology isn’t just a way to help deaf and hearing people communicate, though. New developments are also helping people with motor impairments live more independent lives. In another report, AP said Jeff Bilmes, a researcher at the University of Washington, is putting his knowledge of speech recognition technology to work developing pointing devices the respond to sound rather than being physically manipulated by the human hand.

 

Pointing devices (like the mouse), necessary to navigate between and within many computer applications—and to access information on the Web—can be challenging or impossible for people with motor impairments to use.

 

Bilmes is working with an engineering team to create a system called Vocal Joystick, AP said. This system improves upon existing controllers for motor-impaired individuals, which often are both expensive and may require assistance from a non-impaired person. (Such products include pointing devices controlled by breathing or using one’s tongue, implanted sensors and eye-movement trackers).

 

The Vocal Joystick is a software-based mouse pointer control system that respond to vowel sounds made by the user. For example, the “a” sound in “cat” indicates upward movement and “aw” indicates movement to the right, AP said. Users also can speak vowel sounds that control pointer speed. The user vocalizes into a microphone to control the pointer.

 

It’s clear that, thanks to technological developments, people with physical disabilities will be able to live increasingly independent lives—whether it is a deaf person at an auto repair shop or someone who has lost the use of his/her hands surfing the Web.