Real-Time Text Aims to Improve Internet Accessibility for Deaf and Hard of Hearing

July 30, 2008 By News Report

The blossoming of multimedia content on the Internet in recent years has revolutionised personal interactions, business communications, and other online services. But for millions of Internet users with sensory disabilities, many of the communication tools remain frustratingly out of their reach.

Arnoud van Wijk, disability projects coordinator for the Internet Society (ISOC), who was born deaf, knows only too well the frustration Internet users with a disability experience from many current Internet services.

"During the past few years, the use of the Internet as a modern replacement for telephony has accelerated," said van Wijk. "The ability to include more media in calls provides an excellent opportunity to include people with disabilities in online conversational services. But too often discriminatory voice telephony services are simply re-created."

With this motivation, van Wijk and other researchers have documented a technique for "real-time text" combining existing Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards to enable text streaming over Internet Protocol networks.

View Full Story

You may use or reference this story with attribution and a link to
http://www.govtech.com/health/Real-Time-Text-Aims-to-Improve-Internet.html

| More

Deaf Actor Testifies to Support Equal Access to Communications and Video Technologies

Add Your Comment

Name *

Comment *

You are solely responsible for the content of your comments. We reserve the right to remove comments that are considered profane, vulgar, obscene, factually inaccurate, off-topic, or considered a personal attack.