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November 24, 2004

I Know You Talk to Bill Gates

From: PC Magazine - Nov 24, 2004

ARTICLE DATE: 11.24.04

By Bill Machrone

Actually, I hardly ever talk to Bill Gates anymore, but I used to. An attendee at our recent DigitalLife show, however, wanted me to talk to the Microsoft CEO on his behalf. Aharon, the gentleman in question, was deaf. Not hearing impaired—deaf.

We had no problem communicating. Aharon speech-read as I spoke, and he spoke phonetically and supplemented his speech with quickly jotted notes on a pad he carried. He was the director of the computer department of an international business, and his question was straightforward: Why don't we have cell phones for deaf people?

What's Bill Gates got to do with it? Pocket PCs, smart phones, and similar devices can exchange e-mail from anywhere, but they can't communicate with TTY/TDD machines, the standard terminals for deaf communications. It would take an order from fairly high up the chain to support the TTY protocol, which uses the old five-bit Baudot code system instead of ASCII. I suspect that Aharon had done his homework and perhaps knew that I had chided Microsoft in the past on similar disability issues, most notably the way Windows was incompatible with existing text-to-speech readers for the blind and vision impaired. Microsoft fixed the problem and now has an entire department devoted to disability and impairment issues.

Consider the Problem
You're away on business, your meeting runs late, and you dash to the airport but miss the last flight. No big deal—before you even get out of your rental car, you whip out your cell phone, call the airline, make a reservation for the first morning flight, then call a likely airport hotel and get yourself a room.

Now imagine doing the same thing if you're deaf. You've got to park, go into the airport, and look for either a special services desk or a TTY/TDD machine. The airlines and hotels have TTY terminals, so after a bit of back-and-forth messaging, you get your flight and your room. But by the time you get back to your car and exit the airport, the guy with the cell phone has his room and is perusing the dinner menu.

If we were starting today, the whole deaf-communication system could be handled by a blend of instant messaging and text messaging, but the TTY system is too deeply embedded to be replaced any time soon. So what's needed is an interface from the existing system to the new wireless world.

I did some research on Aharon's behalf, and am pleased to report that others are aware of the problem and are working on it. Lormar Logic, www.lormarlogic.com/iptty.htm, offers Lormar Internet TTY, a service that extends TTY access to Sidekick, BlackBerry, Treo, and Palm devices. The service lets you use your keyboard phone as a TTY device; you can also reach relay operators, who are the human interface between the deaf and the hearing, typing words from your voice calls and giving voice to your caller's TTY-originated messages.

I also found a version of the Danger hiptop smart phone (www.danger.com), which is tailored for deaf and hearing-impaired use. The hiptop2 has a stronger vibration motor, and with its flip-up screen, a more spacious keyboard than many competing devices. In addition to instant messages and e-mail, the hiptop2 supports a variety of services, including MCI's Wireless IP-Relay and Sprint Relay Wireless; both are available as free downloads from a preloaded catalog of services.

Others will offer their own versions of wireless IP relay services. Another version of the hiptop design, the Sidekick II, plays on the T-Mobile service. The Sidekick phone uses GoAmerica's WyndPower 2.0 to allow full-duplex TTY calls as well as relay-operator calls. It even includes built-in access to InSight Cinema, which gives local listings for captioned movies.

Wishes and Dreams
These are very recent—and very welcome—developments, sure to please the deaf and hearing-impaired community, which numbers nearly 28 million people in the U.S. The above list is not meant to be exhaustive, just indicative of the progress being made.

As good as this is, Aharon wishes for more: built-in TTY/TDD compatibility in all Pocket PC and Palm devices, at both the hardware and operating-system levels, with support for folding keyboards. He says that a larger keyboard is essential for the rapid typing in customer conversations. His dream machine? A phone from the Nokia 9000 Communicator series, with full TTY/TDD support, which has already gained wide acceptance among deaf users. I urge the manufacturers to make these dreams come true.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1731004,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03079TX1K0000585

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