The founder of Ultratec gets an honorary doctorate today. The University of Wisconsin-Madison is honoring Robert Engelke for his work in helping develop an inexpensive TTY (Text Telephone) in 1978 from out of the basement of his Wisconsin home. His teletypewriter plugged into a regular phone line, allowing deaf people to communicate with other TTY owners. The young, hearing engineer sold it for less than $200 - way below the typical model which could run as much as $1000. No longer a luxury item that very few in the deaf community could afford, Engelke made it possible for the average person to own one. He was motivated by a deaf friend, Herb Pickell. He attended a National Association of the Deaf conference to get feedback. He continued to have people who are deaf involved in product development ever since.
The FCC has issued new rules about how phones interact with hearing aids in the US. The rules take effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register. Manufacturers and major service providers will have 2 years to put the technical standards into place while smaller providers will have 27 months to do so. Read more details here.
A new glove is designed to help the deaf/blind communication. The Mobile Lorm Glove was put together by Berlin's Design Research Lab. It translates text into the Deafblind Manual alphabet called Lorm that's a tactile signing style still used in Europe. The glove facilitates texting, using email and online chat. Here's a video about the glove.
The Arkansas School for the Deaf a service that allows a 911 dispatcher to see an online profile of the person calling. KTHV-TV offers this video report on DeafNewsToday.com. No captioning, but you can read the story here.
An Australian company is now offering an app that promises to deliver real-time live theater captioning on smartphone and tablet devices. The Captioning Studio app is called GoTheatrical and was first used publically in the city of Canberra for Andrew McKinnon’s production of Dickens’ Women last month. It runs a dollar-99 on Apple’s App Store. The video offers more details (captions included).
Actress Katie Leclerc talks technology with USA Today in the video below. The star of ABC Family's Switched at Birth plays 16-year-old Daphne, who is deaf. Leclerc has a hearing disorder called Meniere's disease, which causes occasional hearing loss.
A groups of students from Ecuador have won a Microsoft Imagine Cup Grant. They designed Skillbox, which helps deaf children by translating audio from a teacher in a classroom into sign language. A wireless headset captures the sound and sends it to a computer for translation. The team will get $75,000 to develop the technology using Microsoft products. The four winning teams were announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland where Bill Gates met with the team captains.
The winners were chosen out of 50 applicants. A video introducing Skillbox is posted below on DeafNewsToday.com (no captioning).
There's a new motion tracking dock that should make apps like FaceTime easier to use. Swivl works with iPhone or any smartphone that is less than 11 millimeters thick. The motorized camera stand follows a users movements, guided by an infrared marker on a wearable Bluetooth mic (which is included). It's a little pricey at $159. Here's a video showing how it works.
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The founder of Ultratec gets an honorary doctorate today. The University of Wisconsin-Madison is honoring Robert Engelke for his work in helping develop an inexpensive TTY (Text Telephone) in 1978 from out of the basement of his Wisconsin home. His teletypewriter plugged into a regular phone line, allowing deaf people to communicate with other TTY owners. The young, hearing engineer sold it for less than $200 - way below the typical model which could run as much as $1000. No longer a luxury item that very few in the deaf community could afford, Engelke made it possible for the average person to own one. He was motivated by a deaf friend, Herb Pickell. He attended a National Association of the Deaf conference to get feedback. He continued to have people who are deaf involved in product development ever since.
