Poster session

The Finnish Federation of the Hard of Hearing: A poster about importance of multichannel communication forms

Sami Virtanen
The Finnish Federation of the Hard of Hearing
Planning Officer

Keywords: Hard of hearing, Multichannel communication, Aging, TV-Subtitles, Speech to text interpretation, Travelling

Abstract

Contemporary development of information society concerns also hard of hearing people.
Hard of hearing people's view has often been neglected in development of products and physical environment.

Traditionally hearing aids have been the way to support communication of hard of hearing people. Lesser attention has been paid to developing alternative ways to ease communication. Visual systems can provide additional information or alternative ways to get useful information.

Finnish population is ageing and hearing loss is very common among aged people. At the present very few of the aged people have hearing aids. Those people would benefit greatly from information provided in visual format.

Television has an important role in modern society. Television broadcasts affirm cultural and social values and support democratic decision making. An adequate level of subtitling must be ensured for making information accessible to all citizens.

Speech to text interpretation is real-time text-based interpreting. Interpreting can be arranged almost everywhere, typical situations relate to education and social events. Text-interpreting services should be developed to answer to the requirements of the information society.

Accessibility of travelling has usually meant solutions for people with mobility disabilities. Travel-related information should be provided in real-time throughout the trip. In practice this means using of visual techniques along the auditive information.

Information about induction loops is not easy to access. Personnel in many conference centres are not aware of technical solutions and therefore guidance is often inadequate.