Seismic Technology Shifts Predicted for Federal Employees
who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

TeleSonic Presents Workshop at the National Training Conference (NTC) on Employment of Federal Employees who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing,
March 16, 17, 18, 1999 in Washington, D.C.

March 16, 1999 New advances in technology offer many exciting solutions to ease business communications for hearing/speech challenged workers. "These seismic shifts in technology," says Leonard Blackshear, guest workshop presenter at the three day National Training Conference (NTC), "will have a major impact on how Federal agencies communicate with their employees and the public at large."

Approximately 7.5% of Federal employees are people with disabilities.  The aging of America will result in an ever-increasing number of workers and the public they serve who have some type of hearing loss or speech disability.  And the number of Federal regulations to protect these employees and the public they serve are growing both in number and strength.   National regulations include Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act, Sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, The Technology-Related Assistance for Individuals with Disabilities Act, and The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. These factors, combined with major advances in technology, are predicted to cause a seismic explosion of changes for the better in communications by the Federal government.

Some of the new technologies discussed by TeleSonic at the three-day conference included:

• video telephony, which makes phone ASL a reality

• TTY audio telephone information and fax-on-demand systems

• software that adds TTY capability to regular, high speed computer modems

• affordable, agency-wide TTY network telephone solutions that reach every worker at every desk (no TTY's or relay service required)

Technologies in the works include closed-captioned radio which will add sight to radio, and highly accurate speaker independent speech recognition software for real-time conversion of speech to text.   Soon, people who are deaf or hard of hearing, will be able to receive news, weather, sports, and radio talk show broadcasts, in a visual format, over the same radio airwaves that are currently broadcasting audio programs.  Advances in computer processing power and speech recognition software, along with advances in wireless microphone technology, and wearable computers, make highly accurate, real-time conversion of speech to text within our grasp.  The "early days" of having to train computers to recognize individual voices will become obsolete.  The new speaker independent speech recognition technologies will make "closed captioned people" a technical reality.

For more information about any of the technologies presented by TeleSonic at the National Training Conference (NTC), or for a copy of the presentation, please send an e-mail request to info@telesonic.com, or call TeleSonic at 1-800-888-5980.