SBIR-STTR Award

The goal of the proposed project will be to demonstrate how TTY communications for the deaf can be enabled on every phone line entering an organization and every phone extension, inexpensively, through software techniques and without additional hardware. In the proposed project, hardware costs will be avoided by incorporating TTY emulation software directly into the phone system (PBX). Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) techniques will be employed to integrate phone system operation with the text system and route a text call to the PC adjacent to the relevant phone extension. The proposed techniques will mean that deaf individuals will be able to call both departments and individual people using the same phone numbers as hearing callers, and this should greatly expand the number of people with whom they can communicate.

Thesaurus Terms:
biomedical equipment development, computer program /software, computer system design /evaluation, deaf aid, telecommunication personal computer

The goal of the proposed research and development is to show how TTY communications for the deaf can be enabled on every phone line entering an organization and on every phone extension through software techniques and without specialized hardware. The proposed technology will allow a deaf caller to dial the same phone numbers as hearing callers and be routed to the same person, department, automated call response system, or call center queue. In the Phase I the R&D team designed a software driver for a standard high density telephone board and added TTY Baudot and "Turbo-Code" support. The team also demonstrated CTI (computer telephony integration). In the Phase II, new techniques to automatically detect incoming text calls will be shown. An example task will be to allow a hearing person to answer a TTY call on any phone extension. A simple call transfer will then cause this text call to be routed to the computer next to this phone. The needs of call centers will be addressed, so that TTY calls can be accepted and can route to the next available call agent. Lastly, it will be shown how text calls from browsers used by the deaf can be accommodated in call centers.

Thesaurus Terms:
biomedical equipment development, computer program /software, computer system design /evaluation, deaf aid, telecommunication personal computer medical rehabilitation related tag