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Cell Phones for the Deaf
nitzan writes "Quoting from the article: 'the software translates the voice on the other side of the line into a three dimensional animated face on the computer, whose lips move in real time synch with the voice allowing the receiver to lip read.' Unfortunately this only works with laptops, but a pda version is in the works." The company website has a demonstration.
I worked with deaf people for a while and they were (and I am sure still are) disappointed that cell phones are not compatible with TTY devices. How difficult is this to do?
I thought it seemed a little weird at first, but then I checked out the other demos. When I knew what the words were ("Thank you" in English, German, French, Spanish, and Japanese), I could easily tell what was being said.
I notice a lot of people complaining about improving text-to-speech, which is far more advanced than this technology. Speech sounds come out in a continuous flow. Getting a computer to recognize the breaks between words, properly spell them reliably, etc. is hard enough on a desktop system, much less a PDA. Especially considering in languages like English, where most vowels in unstressed syllables are rendered vocally as "uh".
This system simply has to hear a sound, and immediately display an associated... well, not "grapheme", since this isn't writing... maybe "pixeme". It is the graphical equivalent of attempting to spell perfectly phonetically.
Also, if you didn't notice it, "invisible" sounds that occur on the back of the tongue are indicated by circles on the cheeks (like hard 'g' and 'k'), and nasal sounds are indicated by a darkening of the nose.
All in all, I think this is an interesting idea. It will be even cooler when they can render different faces so the "avatar" resembles the person to whom you're speaking.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
Actually speech to text is much more reliable.
Text to speech:
1. person speaks
2. software interprets phonetics converts it into words
3. deaf person reads the words
versus
1. person speaks
2. software interprets phonetics into picture based lip movements
3. deaf person interprets picture based lip movements
Point of fact this is unbelievably dumb and is right up there with converting Russian to German for an English speaker to read.
... if you have this software running on a phone then if you are hearing impared you could get real time conversation with the other party without having to go through a human being.
I've spoken with a hearing impared person on a phone before through a TTY system and it is painfully slow. First you have to say your sentence and then they send it. Then the other end needs to read it, type in a response, and then send it at which point it is read back to you. Imagine having a conversation over an Instant Messenger except you're secretary was reading the screen and typing for you. (IM for the blind for example)
I agree that we need better voice to text and text to voice translation. That technology would give use better access for everyone. You could have "hearing" for the hearing impared (speech to text), "reading" for the vision impaired (text to speech), and you could even have "writing" for those with fine muscle control imparement or who are lacking the necessary limbs for various reasons.
But this is an interesting approach to solve one of the three problems.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
Very well put!
I've had deaf friends, one of whom attended Gallaudet University. (Famous liberal arts college for the deaf.) In addition, I lost most of my hearing for some years as a child -- fortunately, I got it back after surgery. I've thought about deafness, and dealt with it.
Lip-reading works best for people who were hearing at one point and lost some or all of their hearing. I went deaf after I learned to talk, and went deaf slowly, which means I relied heavily upon it. People who have always been deaf often find lip-reading very difficult, or even impossible. When you have no concept of hearing or sound, trying to figure out what meaning is associated with specific lip movements is tough.
This is true of learning to read, as well. A person who was already speaking, or could read, before going deaf has no real problem with reading. If you can't hear and never have heard, though, the concept of an alphabet and "sounding it out" makes no sense. A congenitally deaf person who wants to learn to read must learn each word as a whole, much as a Chinese or Japanese person who learns to read his/her language must learn each character separately.
Since a congenitally deaf person faces a humongous task regardless of whether he/she is learning to read lips, or read and write, just which one do you think he/she would rather have to learn? In most cases, learning to read and write is going to be a lot more useful.
From where I sit, speech to text would work better for most deaf people, congenitally deaf or not.
Catherine