Have you ever noticed a group of people communicating with a special sign language and making themselves understood to each other without speaking a single word?

Hand signals and text messages used by hearing-impaired people.

If you would like to chat with them, you probably have no idea how to communicate with these people.

But now a development technology service called Telecommunication Relay can help to reduce the communication gap between ordinary people and deaf, hard-of-hearing or speech-disabled people.

There is a universal right for disabled people to access public services equally, according to Wantanee Phantachat Programme Director, Assistive Technology Center, National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (Nectec).

Currently, hearing-impaired and speech-disabled people experience difficulties using services in various places such as banks, hospitals, emergency rescue centres, police stations, department stores and private businesses because of the limitations in their communication capabilities.

Recently, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) granted 2.5 million baht of research and development funds in collaboration with Nectec to set up the Telecommunication Relay Service Centre, or TRS, to acting as a middleman, providing relay or translation services for people with hearing or speech disabilities.

The centre will provide various forms of communication, starting with a text relay service and SMS service.

Text Relay Service is one of the subset services that will be offered by the Telecommunication Relay Service Centre.

This user group often uses SMS to communicate with others and each hearing or speech-impaired person on average has to send seven SMS messages in order to communicate one topic, which incurs greater cost than non-disabled users.

With the TRS, a person with a hearing or speech disability uses a special text telephone to call the relay center.

The telephone has a keyboard, allowing people to type their conversations.

The text is read on a display screen. The user calls a TRS center and types the number of the person they wish to call.

The communication assistant at the center makes a voice call to the other party and relays the words back and forth by speaking what a text user types, and typing what a voice user speaks.

Or the users can use the Video Relay Service, allowing impaired people to use sign language via videophone at home, webcam on computer, or video on mobile once the 3G network is rolled out, and having an interpreter at the centre translate the sign language for the recipient

VDO service will aid communication in many critical cases, especially when consulting with the doctors, allowing them to get more detailed information about symptoms.

Furthermore, it is expected that the service will be of minimal cost to disabled people - either free or at local call rates. NTC will discuss the issue with fixed line and mobile operators.

A demonstration of how the Telecommunication Relay Service Centre will enable equal opportunities in communication.

Wantanee also suggested that the centre will provide an Internet Relay Service by facilitating text chat via instant messenger from impaired people to a communication assistant who will read the typed instant message to the designated recipient. Or they can use VDO chat via an instant messenger program to communicate with the telephone user via the agent.

Moreover, the centre also facilitates an emergency response service for anyone needing urgent help in cases such as fires or accidents.

Wantanee plans to eventually offer the service beyond the centre, asking members of the pubic to volunteer, or for private areas such as hospitals, police stations and banks to implement Video Relay Service kiosks, allowing users to access the translation service to help them communicate with bank officers, nurses, doctors, and so on.

There are similar centres already operating under universal service obligations in 17 countries, including the USA, New Zealand, China and Korea.

Australia's TRC has 50 agent seats to serve 8,000 people with hearing and speaking disabilities from a total population of 22 million citizens, compared with Thailand which has 350,000 hearing and/or speech-disabled people.

Thailand therefore would eventually need hundreds of agent seats to meet demand.

However, in the first two years of the first phase projects, the centre will have five agent seats offering a 24-hour service, which is expected to cost around 30-40 million baht.

Meanwhile the three-year second phase will provide a Speech-to-Speech (STS) Relay Service.

This form of TRS will work as a speech enhancer for people with speech disabilities.

An agent, who will be specially trained in understanding a variety of speech disorders, will repeat and relay what the caller says in a manner that makes their words clear and understandable to the receiving party. No special telephone will be needed.

Captioned telephone service is another option for people who have a hearing disability, but are not deaf and retain some residual hearing, such as senior citizens.

This service can be accessed with a special telephone that has a text screen to display captions of what the other party to the conversation is saying.

A captioned telephone allows a user on one line to speak to the called party and to simultaneously listen to the other party and read captions of what they are saying.

Unlike traditional TRS where the agent types what the called party says, in this case the agent repeats what the called party says.

Speech recognition technology automatically transcribes the agent's voice into text and then transmits it directly to the user's captioned telephone text display.

In the third phase, the centre expects to provide a Total Conversation Service, an Access for All concept which was first described by the International Telecommunications Union.

The service can support use of video, text and voice at the same time in a call. It allows any mix of sign language, speech and typing that suits the participants in each call.

For example, the users can send text messages which the system then translates into voice to the recipient. Or it can use a computer-based interpreter by translating sign language into text automatically.

On Dec 14, NTC will open for all stakeholders to discuss their views in a public hearing related on the universal service obligation to revise its plan to serve targeted users.

"More importantly, there is a need for collaboration in any stakeholder to make outreach recognition about their consumers' right to access these services through community leaders, exhibitions, and so on," Wantanee said.

She continued that "technology enabling disabled people to access social services by using a shared resource call centre through TSC will help them to overcome an existing deficit in translators.

"At present. only 40 people graduate each year [in this field], while this group has increased in number over the past few years."

Source: www.bangkok.post.com/tech/technews/28947/technology-give-a-voice-to-all-regardless-of-disability