- Aim: Drive forward innovation in the delivery of the RNID Typetalk service through full evaluation of at least three leading voice-recognition software solutions.
- Impact: Three leading software packages were fully tested to investigate whether re-voicing conversations, using automatic speech recognition, could be used as an alternative to Relay Assistants typing. The results showed that the accuracy was still considerably below the 98% target currently achieved.
Further development, and investment by BT, will be needed before a switch to this exciting new technology can be considered, therefore we are continuing with the current methods.
- Aim: The above aim and impact is available in BSL
- Impact: You should be seeing a video here instead of this text. Please visit the Macromedia site to get the Flash Video Player.
- Aim: Review the technical performance, usability and design of 75 products and services of particular benefit to people with hearing loss and tinnitus.
- Impact: More than 50 products were reviewed for the One in Seven membership magazine in more depth than originally planned. Thirty-six new items were tested for our retail arm and a few were evaluated for external companies. We also reviewed services, such as high definition television, and their relevance to people with a hearing loss.
- Aim: Develop and trial innovations, including virtual signing applications, to improve access to information delivered through electronic formats such as websites.
- Impact: The RNID New Technologies team launched a new service to provide BSL signed content suitable for websites and other electronic applications and has worked with several organisations during the year.
Avatars (computer generated images of people) with better facial features and slicker movement were selected to create more realistic signs in virtual signing applications.
Virtual signing research work with both the BBC and Scottish Qualifications Authority was successfully completed.
- Aim: The above aim and impact is available in BSL
- Impact: You should be seeing a video here instead of this text. Please visit the Macromedia site to get the Flash Video Player.
- Aim: Lobby two high street retailers to encourage the consumer electronics industry to provide guidance to help people who are deaf or hard of hearing make informed choices about accessible equipment.
- Impact: A number of approaches to high street retailers failed to persuade them to do more to promote the accessibility features of the products they already retail. We will continue to push them to do more and will consider alternative ways to bring about this much needed result.
- Aim: The above aim and impact is available in BSL
- Impact: You should be seeing a video here instead of this text. Please visit the Macromedia site to get the Flash Video Player.
- Aim: Improve real-time communication between deaf people by developing software-based communication solutions like TalkByText.
- Impact: Using 'open standards' to ensure compatibility, RNID has developed a family of award-winning software products to allow real time, character by character text conversations between PCs, and with existing textphones. It is also possible to use the software with RNID’s Typetalk service.
The Business Edition has been successfully launched and a version for use on home PCs will become available to buy during 2008.
- Aim: The above aim and impact is available in BSL
- Impact: You should be seeing a video here instead of this text. Please visit the Macromedia site to get the Flash Video Player.
- Aim: Identify and evaluate at least 100 new product designs for listening products, working in-house and with manufacturers, academics and the design community.
- Impact: Nearly 100 industrial design students took up RNID’s challenge to design attractive and innovative hearing protection products. After judging by leading UK design companies, the winning design - an "Ear-card", a unique credit card style solution with compressed hearing protection plugs - was prominently featured in a leading design magazine and the national press.
We launched the UK’s first affordable fully digital listener, the RNID Sonido, which is already outselling the original RNID Crystal by 300%, and selected 30 new products for retail.
- Aim: The above aim and impact is available in BSL
- Impact: You should be seeing a video here instead of this text. Please visit the Macromedia site to get the Flash Video Player.
Technology
Chi Shing Lo won our earplug competition, entered by over 100 students from one of the UK’s top design universities, for his credit card-style device called Ear-card. “I am very happy that I won RNID’s earplug competition. I have learnt about the importance of hearing protection and with this award I now feel more confident with my design projects. It is a great milestone for me in my ambition to become a product designer.” We are currently working to get Shing’s innovative earplug manufactured and available throughout the UK.
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