Helping the hearing impaired make phone calls

December 2008

• T-City improved the communications possibilities for deaf or hearing-impaired people in public areas with Telephony for the Hearing Impaired. 
  
  
• The partners of this project are TeSS, the sign language interpreting service, and the “Deutsche Gesellschaft der Hörgeschädigten-Selbsthilfe und Fachverbände” (German Society for the Hearing Impaired).
  
  
• The terminals have an integrated screen, a special camera as well as access to TeSS.
  
  
• By pressing the touch-sensitive screen, a video connection to a sign language interpreter is established, who simultaneously translates the conversation to the conversation partner with normal hearing. 
  
  
• In the following two and half years, the application was tested on eight multimedia stations in T-City – two of which have been permanently installed. 
  
  
• In agreement with societies for the hearing impaired and TeSS, terminals were set up nation-wide at further selected locations to meet the requirements for this special form of telephony.
  
  
• Südkurier from December 10, 2008: Seeing instead of hearing
  Excerpt: More than 14 million people are living with hearing disorders of varying severity in Germany. Until recently, telephoning was impossible for deaf or severely hearing-impaired people.