Animated Face Helps Deaf with Phone Chat
From: New Scientist - 08/02/2004
By: Will Knight

Researchers at Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology, University College
London, the Viataal software company in the Netherlands, and the
Belgium-based Babletech voice analysis firm have developed a prototype system
that supplies an animated face to help people with hearing difficulties
understand what is being said on the other end of a phone line. Synface, as
the system is called, runs on a conventional laptop and can be plugged into
any kind of phone. The software matches voice to mouth movements using a
neural network that identifies phonemes rather than whole words, which is a
fast way to match words to animation while also enabling the system to more
accurately represent unfamiliar words. Synface can produce animated
annunciations is about one-fifth of a second, and incorporates a fractional
delay so that the animated face and the voice are in perfect sync. Synface
was tested at Britain's Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID), and
results showed that 84 percent of hard-of-hearing volunteers were able to
recognize words and converse normally over the phone using the system.
Synface has been trained to function in English, Dutch, and Swedish, and
could be refined to accommodate various regional dialects. The system was
designed as a tool for people who have some difficulty hearing rather than
those who are severely hearing-disabled. 

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996228