PhoneTag Live, you’re it!
Ditech Networks (not the lenders) has had a voice mail transcription service for a while. Now they’re offering live transcription for conference calls. This is a mainstream version of the real-time captioning service that’s been available for deaf and hard of hearing participants through specialty service providers. Going mainstream often has payoffs in quality, variety, and price; what will the future of live transcription bring? Right now it’s on the phone; will we see live follow-me transcription bringing captioning into every environment?
PhoneTag Live Transcription for Conference Calls available now from Ditech Networks | Business Wire
Talk radius
Hmmm…a headset that bypasses touch screen access problems by enabling both audio output and speech input? Sounds like a product designed for blind (and some learning/cognitively disabled) folks, but it’s actually a mainstream product from Bluetrek that was shown at CES last week.
Ubergizmo: Bluetrek Dial 2DO Bluetooth headset does text to voice to text
Thus voicemailed Zarathustra
GotVoice is the forthcoming result of a collaboration between Microsoft and a company called Spoken to create a better strategy for doing audio-to-text transcription of voicemails. Unlike some current systems that rely heavily on human transcription, GotVoice will use a hybrid of software transcription and human “troubleshooting.” Fingers crossed that this will lower the price of the service and make it more readily available to the deaf and learning-disabled folks who are likely to find it particularly beneficial.
Gadgetell: Spoken teams with Microsoft to offer transcribed text voicemail service
The turn of the SQ?
We wrote several days ago about the Dream Screen, a limited Internet access device that might find its niche in a senior/accessibility arena. A portable device with even more potential is the Lighthouse SQ7, which provides a web browser, easy access to Facebook and Twitter–AND voice recognition capability. As always, we’re skeptical about the ability of the last-named feature to accommodate all users, but even without that the SQ7 could find an audience among those who need or value simplicity in their web access strategies.
Coffee talk
Hammacher Schlemmer is coming out with a coffee maker that politely asks, “Would you like to set the clock or set the coffee brewing time?”, and then responds to your verbal commands. Obvious hands-free implications, and no indication in the description that voice training is necessary–although that makes us wonder how it does with dysarthric speech or accents. In other words, is it like buttah, or would it leave us verklempt?
Sound design
Deaf folks used to get pretty much a free pass through the Internet, since there was minimal sound-only content. This changed with innovations such as podcasts. Now audio has become ubiquitous enough that people are starting to look at recommending techniques for indexing and navigating information for a modality that is presented in a strictly linear fashion. We haven’t yet been able to access the full article, but we’re curious to know whether these techniques will involve any speech-to-text conversion, and whether this text can be exposed at least for Deaf individuals and anyone who benefits from simultaneous audio and visual presentation.
Presentment or resentment?
E-presentment is a fancy term referring to “the process of delivering traditionally paper-based documents online in electronic formats,” focused on the mainstream audience. Automatic boon for screen reader/text reader users? Not necessarily; the presentation is likely to be in PDF, which is at best iffy for speech output compatibility, or TIFF, which speech output can’t access at all. Strikes us that with just a little more thought, e-presentment could be a major accessibility service rather than just another barrier.
TechNewsWorld: The Vital Role of E-Presentment in Online Self-Service