Deaf Digital Age - Wired and Wireless Video, Text, and Pagers

This article is one of a continuing series from the biannual conference hosted by Telecommunications for the Deaf, Inc. (TDI). The presenter was Norm Williams. A word of warning: It's a little bit "techie". I've tried to make it reasonably understandable, but I'm not sure how well I succeeded <G>

Video capability is a wonderful media for communicating. Sorenson sells VisionLink and EnVision, which facilitate video over a PC (personal computer). They market these products in the deaf community. Check it out at http://www.deafvideochat.com.

Microsoft's NetMeeting is a good product, and it's free. But it's not easy to use.

Microsoft's new operation system, Windows XP, will have Windows Messaging with Video. This will be included in the operating system, along with chat, text, etc. It should be very easy to use. It will be released this fall, but you must get Windows XP.

Video Relay is a great system. Several relay centers and interpreting services provide IP [Ed: internet protocol - the basic protocol used on the internet] and telephone based video interpreting. You can use ISDN, DSL, or cable modem [Ed: various "high bandwidth" systems - much faster than dial-up using a modem. Any kind of video requires these higher bandwidths.]

Video Calls on the Internet are great, but they often can't get thru the firewall. Most companies that use Internet video use private ISDN lines, which pass through the firewall. It's fine for home DSL or cable modem, where you don't have a firewall or can configure it yourself. It's very nice once you get it set up.

Video Relay Interpreters are a great service, but some users may not like using an interpreter. There are privacy issues. It's also hard to save the "transcripts" of video calls, because the files are so big. But it does save a lot of time.

An up and coming service is wireless video conferencing using the 802.11b protocol. Sorenson EnVision and NetMeeting can communicate, because both are H.323 compatible. I've done a demo using two laptops, one at 266Mhz and the other at 1 GHz. The picture on the slow machine was blurry and jerky. On the 1GHz machine, it was very clear and looked like at least 15 FPS [Ed: frames per second - the "standard" for "real-time" video is 30 FPS, but 15 looks very good!]. The actual connection was only 128K [Ed: about twice as fast as the fastest dial-up], and it got 15 FPS. Wireless cards cost $100 each. As the distance from the base station to the laptop increases, the bandwidth is reduced, so the quality goes down.

Some issues to consider with wireless devices: Coverage, is it 2 way, vibration notification, 911 center, easy to carry, email support, VCO [Ed: voice carry over - one of the ways to use relay] support, chat, easy to type while walking, easy to read inside and out, support TTY/relay calls, read notification, instant messaging

Some issues to consider with a wireless phone and TTY: VCO, coverage (generally better than pagers), not really portable, power adapters, prepaid service, analog/digital, air protocol (GSM, CDMA, TDMA) [Ed: These are the various protocols that wireless systems use to communicate between the phone and the tower. All three are used in the US; of course, they're all incompatible!]

Last spring RIM and Qualcomm announced a partnership for the CDMA network. We will soon have new pagers that ride that network. Motorola has 2 new pagers that really are phones. The A009 looks good for the deaf community; it supports three air protocols. The V100 probably isn't as good.

The standard TTY connection is the RJ-11 phone jack or the acoustic coupler. Now new TTYs have a 2.5 mm audio jack to connect to a cell phone.