An Assistive Technology Framework for Communication with Hearing Impaired Persons

Abstract

Communication over a mobile phone with an ordinary person (OP) is a challenging activity for a hearing impaired person (HIP). Finding a suitable communication method over mobile phones for HIPs is still an unsolved problem, even though there are numerous communication approaches. Therefore, it is important to introduce a solution which enables stress free communication for HIPs. In order to address the problem, this dissertation proposes a novel assistive technology (AT) framework which provides an interface to communicate between the HIP and the OP over the mobile phone. When the proposed AT framework is in operation, it converts an OP’s voice to text and afterwards text to tactile feedback at the HIP’s end. With such a capability, this AT framework facilitates both literate and illiterate HIPs to communicate with OPs over a mobile phone without having much trouble. The Morse Code (MC) vibrations are the most suitable method for providing the tactile feedback to the HIP, since MC is a standard AT which helps disabled persons. It is important to use a set of MC shorthand vibration patterns to translate the whole text message to tactile feedbacks to provide a simple, efficient and synchronous communication, rather than vibrating for all text relevant MC characters. A prototype of this AT framework has been used to conduct the evaluation of the study. It is used to gauge the familiarization with MC shorthand vibrations, the usability of the extended MC abbreviations and acronyms, and the perspicuity of a HIP’s voice. According to the outcomes, most of the HIPs’ preferred method for conversation is the MC shorthand forms with two or three character length rather than reading the text message. Due to less perspicuity of a HIP’s voice, the study comes up with conversion of the HIPs’ voice to text and sends it to the OP synchronously as a voice reply. The results of the evaluation convinces that the AT framework facilitates improving the communication of HIPs over a mobile phone.