3G phones to aid deaf people

date: May 11, 2001

.Scientists from Germany, Spain, Sweden and UK are working on a project called WISDOM (Wireless Information Services for Deaf People on the Move). The project is going to take advantages of multimedia services 3G handsets can provide and use it to aid deaf people.

In the future deaf people can use sign language to call up news and sports via a video serve using 3G handsets. Plus able to call up a real-time live interpretation services to help deaf people in communicating with hearing people.

The Scientists from the consortium are planning to merge the sign language recognition system that they have been developing for many years into the 3G handsets. The EU is funding £4million into the project to help the 0.2% of the public that is deaf in Europe.

"For hearing people, if they have their mobile phone they have speech recognition; we would like to do the same for deaf people," said a spokeswoman from WISDOM. "So I could do the sign, for instance, for sports or news, and immediately the server for sports or news will appear. That's the kind or research area we have."

She said from the consortium said the technology is looking very positive and can understand sentences of up to nine signs with an error rate of only 10%.

Another feature in the development is to call up as live interpreter if deaf person is trying to communicate with a person who does not understanding sign language. This service can be use, for example, in the bank or hospital etc.

However these services are unlikely to be coming out at the same time as 3G rollout, the cost involved in streaming live video on the handsets is just too costly. Expect it to come out when operators can lower operational cost.

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last updated: January 12, 2004

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