Real-Time Texting for Deaf People
From: BBC News - 12/23/2005
By: Geoff Adams-Spink

The Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) has developed new
software that will enable deaf people to have real-time text conversations
using a mobile phone. The application is designed to work with RNID's
Typetalk facility, which already allows landline users to make calls. Any
modern mobile handset can use the software for enabling
character-by-character text communication. "It has taken innovation in the
voluntary sector to deliver this software," says Guido Gybels, new
technologies director for the RNID. "It's now time for operators to make sure
that all their customers can access real-time text communication." RNID has
called on the mobile network operators to embrace the application and offer
it to their customers, but says not everyone in the industry has fulfilled
their legal obligation to make their services accessible to everyone. Only
Vodafone offers a relay service that uses the software, RNID adds. In a relay
service, the operator turns the voice part of a deaf person's conversation
into text, and relays the text replies of a deaf person into speech. 

Read the entire article at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4546924.stm

Links:
Royal National Institute for Deaf People
http://www.rnid.org.uk/

Typetalk and TextDirect
http://www.rnid-typetalk.org.uk/

Guido Gybels
http://www.guidogybels.net/

Vodafone
http://online.vodafone.co.uk/dispatch/Portal/appmanager/vodafone/wrp