John Maucere Video: Texting and Driving
A vlog of actor John Maucere’s performing his “Don’t Text and Drive” can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg6U0Snczc4.
It is a two-minute public service announcement with an important message, sponsored by Sprint Relay. Performed in ASL, the video has music and sound effects.
- Thanks to NVRC, Fairfax
Advocacy: FCC Advisory on Hearing Aid Compatibility with Digital Wireless
FCC Acts to Educate and Alert to Enforcement of Rules;
One of First Advisories Focuses on Hearing Aid Compatibility of Digital Wireless Services
The Federal Communications Commission’s Enforcement Bureau recently stated its commitment to strong, vigorous and fair enforcement of the Commission’s rules. Enforcement Advisories are now being released, designed to educate businesses about and alert consumers to what’s required by FCC rules, the purpose of those rules and why they’re important to consumers, as well as the consequences of failures to comply.
Here’s an excerpt from one of the first Enforcement Advisories is on Hearing Aid Compatibility (HAC) and digital wireless services:
Enforcement Bureau Takes Action to Enhance Access to
Digital Wireless Service for Individuals with Hearing Disabilities
Wireless Service Providers and Handset Manufacturers Advised to Review Compliance
The Enforcement Bureau has taken action against several companies for their failure to provide information that helps individuals with hearing disabilities fully utilize wireless phone services – allowing them to communicate effectively on their wireless phones without excessive feedback and noise.
FCC rules require most digital wireless handset manufacturers and wireless service providers to make available a minimum number of hearing aid compatible handsets.[1] In order to ensure that consumers have access to up-to-date information on the availability of those handsets, and to ensure that the Commission can monitor compliance, FCC rules also require these manufacturers and service providers to make periodic status reports and to post specific information on their public web sites. The Enforcement Bureau this week proposed forfeitures totaling $87,000 against seven companies, and issued Citations to two additional companies, for violating the reporting and posting requirements.
The reports and web content provide valuable information to the public concerning the technical testing and commercial availability of hearing aid-compatible handsets, both for consumers, particularly those with hearing disabilities, and for service providers seeking information regarding the hearing aid compatibility of manufacturers’ products. The rules at issue in this week’s actions require the following:
§ Manufacturers were required to submit reports detailing their efforts toward compliance with the hearing aid compatibility requirements on January 15, 2009, on July 15, 2009, and must continue to file them on an annual basis on July 15 thereafter.
To read the full Advisory: http://www.fcc.gov/eb/Enforcement_Advisories/Welcome.htm
- Thanks to NVRC, Fairfax
Wireless Phone News and Queries
Apple Fined for Not Filing Hearing Aid Compatibility Status Report
How’s Your iPhone or Droid?
Using Your Cell Phone with Speakerphone Feature?
Apple Fined for Not Filing Hearing Aid Compatibility Status Report
Apple, Inc. has been fined $5,000 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for violating the requirement to file a wireless handset hearing aid compatibility status report by the FCC’s deadline. Although Apple was given an exemption from the Hearing Aid Compatibility Act requirements for the iPhone, it still must file reports. The company can choose to appeal this fine.
Consumer organizations have strongly disagreed with the exemption granted for the iPhone. Several individuals have sent complaints to the FCC on this, as well the iPhone’s disregard of Section 255 of the Communications Act. Section 255 requires companies that manufacture and provide telecommunications products and services to address the needs of people with disabilities at the time they design, develop and fabricate those products and services.
Some individuals with hearing loss have noted that the most recent version of the iPhone has better sound quality despite its lack of hearing aid compatibility. We’ve also heard from other individuals that the iPhone’s new competitor, Verizon’s Droid, has good sound quality. Because each individual’s hearing loss is unique, even these improvements in sound quality will not be enough, and NVRC strongly supports enforcement of the hearing aid compatibility requirements and Section 255..
How’s Your iPhone or Droid?
We are interested in hearing from individuals with hearing loss who have one of these phones about how satisfied they are with the audio and what, if anything, they use to make it more understandable.
Using Your Cell Phone with Speakerphone Feature?
Also a number of individuals with hearing loss have reported that they hear conversations better when their wireless phones are set to speakerphone mode.
– Cheryl Heppner, Executive Director, NVRC (Fairfax)
New cell phone technology allows deaf people to communicate anytime, anywhere
Robert Barker/University Photography
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| Sheila Hemami, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and graduate student Frank Ciaramello have created cell phones that allow deaf people to use sign language in real time. |
Robert Barker/University Photography
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| Frank Ciaramello signs into one of the phones. |
For those who are deaf or hard of hearing, cell phone use has largely been limited to text messaging. But technology is catching up: Cornell researchers and colleagues have created cell phones that allow deaf people to communicate in sign language — the same way hearing people use phones to talk.
“We completely take cell phones for granted,” said Sheila Hemami, Cornell professor of electrical and computer engineering, who leads the research with Eve Riskin and Richard Ladner of the University of Washington. “Deaf people can text, but if texting were so fabulous, cell phones would never develop. There is a reason that we like to use our cell phones. People prefer to talk.”
The technology, Hemami continued, is about much more than convenience. It allows deaf people “untethered communication in their native language” — exactly the same connectivity available to hearing people, she said.
Since the project, Mobile ASL (American Sign Language), started four years ago, the researchers have published several academic papers on their technology and given talks around the world. The first phone prototypes were created last year and are now in the hands of about 25 deaf people in the Seattle area.
Standard videoconferencing is used widely in academia and industry, for example, in distance-learning courses. But the Mobile ASL team designed their video compression software specifically with ASL users in mind, with the goal of sending clear, understandable video over existing limited bandwidth networks. They also faced such constraints as phones’ battery life and their ability to process real-time video at enough frames per second. They solved the battery life problem by writing software smart enough to vary the frames per second based on whether the user is signing or watching the other person sign.
Because ASL requires efficient motion capture, the researchers had to make video compression software that could deliver video at about 10 frames per second. They also had to work within the standard wireless 2G network, which only allows transmission of video at about 15-20 kilobits per second.
This is a relatively small amount of information when compared with a YouTube video, which travels at about 600 kilobits per second. For further comparison, high-definition digital television images come in at 6-10 megabits per second.
Researching how ASL developed gave the team clues on how people use it, said Frank Ciaramello, a graduate student working on the project. They learned that deaf people often use only one hand to sign, depending on the situation, and that they’re very good at adapting as needed.
And they found that when two people are talking to each other, they spend almost the entire time focused on the other person’s face.
“The facial expressions are really important in ASL, because they add a lot of information,” Ciaramello said. They concluded that their cell phone video would have to be clearest in the face and hands, while they could spare some detail in the torso and in the background. Studies with deaf people who rated different videos on an intelligibility scale helped the researchers hone in on the best areas to focus in their video.
The researchers are now perfecting their intelligibility metrics while also looking for ways to bring down the cost of integrating the software into the phones. Making the phones as user friendly as possible is a key goal of the project, Hemami said.
“We don’t want people to use the technology and say, ‘This is annoying,’” Hemami said. “We want it to be really technology transparent. We want them to call their mother and have a nice conversation.”
Mobile ASL is funded by the National Science Foundation.
Note: This is an update on the MobileASL project that can be found at http://mobileasl.cs.washington.edu/index.html. A demonstration of the technology can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaE1PvJwI8E
- From http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Dec09/MobileASL.html.
911 Texting Won’t Work – Yet
Filed under: Cell Phones, Emergency Preparedness, Mobile Pagers
By Bill Leukhardt, Hartford Courant, 11/19/09
NVRC Note: There is a non-captioned video of a broadcast on this at http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-911texting1119.artnov19,0,2356078.story
Text messaging is perfect for casual chatting, but right now it’s useless for contacting 911 and will remain so for years, state officials and telecommunication experts testified Wednesday.
“Currently, the ability to text 911 does not exist,” Marissa Mitrovich of Verizon Wireless told the state legislature’s public safety committee at an informational hearing on using text messages to get police, fire and other emergency assistance. “It will take many years.”
The millions of text messages sent daily by cellphone users are handled equally by carriers, so a 911 message could sit for hours before it is delivered. Even then, it’s worthless, as dispatch centers don’t have the technical capacity to receive it, lawmakers heard.
No one was willing to predict how long it may take state and federal agencies and the national telecommunication industry to resolve the equipment, security and technical roadblocks to 911 texting.
Until then, it’s still best to call and talk directly to a dispatcher, said John Danaher, the state’s public safety commissioner. A call gives the 911 center the location and callback number of the telephone used and allows the dispatcher to ask questions and get more information, he said.
The hearing was triggered, in part, by the violent death of Alice Morrin, the Vernon woman who was shot to death by her estranged husband, James Morrin, on June 28. Police said Alice Morrin spent the last moments of her life frantically sending text messages to a friend seeking help. James Morrin killed her as police showed up at their house, then committed suicide.
“When I saw the media reports on that incident in Vernon, it touched me,” said Rep. Stephen Dargan, D-West Haven, the committee co-chair, said after the meeting. “I’m not familiar with texting. So I thought we could have an informational meeting and learn more about it and 911.”
Peter White, director of public policy for AT&T, said 911 texting will be possible when the nation’s emergency dispatch system is upgraded from copper-based land lines to a fiber-optic-based system capable of receiving digital information, such as texting and videos.
“That’s what’s coming sometime in the future,” he said. “Until then, if you need help, don’t go to Facebook. Don’t Twitter. Don’t send a text message. Call and talk.”
Verizon has programmed its system to discourage customers from 911 texting. When its equipment detects a 911 message, it gives the sender an error message, saying that there is no text service to 911 and that the person should “please make a voice call to 911,” Mitrovich said.
At the hearing, Danaher discussed an ambitious state project started three years ago to create a fiber-optic system linking all 107 emergency call centers, hundreds of police, fire and other first-responder stations, the judicial system and medical facilities.
The project, which will cost $58 million over 10 years, is financed by the 47-cent monthly charge paid by land-line phone subscribers to support a new emergency call system.
The first few years of the project were spent planning, but now work has begun installing fiber-optic cable in some Hartford-area towns. All the cable should be installed by 2011 and the system ready to link all the facilities in a secure, digital network that will make sharing information much easier, Danaher said.
The new system also will be able to receive text messages, once national wireless networks and the federal government figure out how to quickly and securely deliver 911 texts to emergency centers. But for a while, the state will be ahead of the curve.
“All we can do is take care of our end of the system,” Danaher said. “We’ll be ready when 911 texting can be used.”
Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant
- Thanks to CM and NVRC, Fairfax
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