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ITU - FG AVA WORKSHOP
OCTOBER 25, 2013
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>> YUSHI NAITO: Shall we get started? Good morning, ladies and
gentlemen. My name is Yushi Naito, study group 16 Chairman. And I am
honored to Chair this session, session 2, improving accessibility and assistive
technologies using text-to-speech, are now introduced in computers and
televisions and Smartphones and so on. This session provide as example
what can be done to integrate assistive technologies and we were expecting
to have three speakers but unfortunately Radi from Pakistan can't come to
this meeting. We have two presentations today. The first one is from Ulrike
Haltrich from Germany and she is the head Delegate of IEC TC100 and also
these two -- to this Focus Group and she received IEC 196 Delegate awards
from TEC 100. Now Ulrike, you have the floor.
>> ULRIKE HALTRICH: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is a
pleasure to report this morning on IEC TC100 and my name is Ulrike Haltrich
from Sony Europe. So what I would like to talk about this morning are the
ambient assisted living and accessibility activities. They are all related to
audiovisual and multimedia equipment. Just to show you a brief overview of
what devices and systems are basically covered in TC100, it was a
professional and also the consumer devices side. As for the structure of
TC100 just very briefly the Chairman is David Falon from the U.S. and then
the Secretariat is from Japan. We have an advisory group on strategy where
we introduce study sessions on ambient assisted living and accessibility
already many years ago. And then we have a management group, AGM and
different technical areas. So the technical areas I don't want to go through
all of them but you see that -- so the focus is in technical area 1, for
example, on terminal, audio individual yeah, and additional data services
and then cover digital system interfaces, cable Networks and multimedia
home server systems in T A9 and then also what is related to our
accessibility activities to some extent is the work in TA 10 multimedia for
e-publishing and e-book technology and also considering the needs for the
Visually Impaired people and then looking in to quality for audio and video
and energy efficiency and Smart Grid and then environmental aspects and
interfaces and measurement for personal computing and wireless power
transfer. Objectives and strategies of TC100 are to enrich human life with
entertainment provided by audio, video and multimedia. Some examples I
think the second part contribute to society is more relevant for this group
currently. So power consumption, of course, and then energy efficiency and
accessibility and usability aspects of AV and multimedia equipment and then
functional requirements for television and we also con ducted a survey on
ambient assisted living use cases. TC100, recognized already the work of
accessibility in 2007 and now extends basically the scope and sees
accessibility as one part of ambient assisted living. So in TC100 the
activities started already in 2007 and state civil project was established at
this time and the technical report 62678 was a liveable of this project. So
audio, video and multimedia systems and equipment activities and
consideration related to accessibility and usability was published in 2010.
We started with a study sessions in the strategic group in May 2011 and
also established a liaison for the European Blind Union with this user group
be really closely cooperate and they are also attending all meetings for think
the last three years or two and a half years.
In January this year we have published IEC 62731 and it defines the
text-to-speech functionality for television and the prestandards were both
started in digital Europe. Our CE and IT industry Association, Mia was also
part of the group that you commissioned will closely monitor this and the
European disability Forum also actively participated and the European
disability Forum they sent basically the technical experts now from the
European Blind Union to TC100 and then we had a meeting in Dallas last
year and there it was agreed to establish a state project on ambient assisted
living and we conducted a survey related to use cases related to TC100 and
the scope is much bigger than what we try to focus on AV and multimedia
systems. As you probably know in IC there is also SMB strategic group
established No. 5 on AAL and TC100 contribute to this work. And what we
tried to do is we identify a huge work items in the area of TC100 and we are
currently preparing the technical report of use cases.
The current related activities is for us, we finalized the survey and we
received 17 relevant use cases. This group has also contributed use cases
for audio description subtitling and spoken subtitles. This is also covered in
the TR and then in the meantime we also published PAS, public available
specification which is the result of a project UniversAAL. I can share this
with you if you like after the session.
And then the draft PR which we currently developing on use cases will be
finalized by the end of this month. So we are currently in the final review
space in the project team and then in our last meeting in September in
Shenzhen the European blind union, EBU is the European blind union. They
proposed a new work item on digital television accessibility and usability
functional specification and this is currently discussed in only the project
team and there will be probably some methods before the end of the year to
the national Committee.
As for the use cases I said that we received 17 and we structured them in
the following classes. So communication and social interaction
entertainment use case scenarios and then daily life support, safety, security
and privacy at home, monitoring health care and wellness, active aging and
some mobile use case scenario. This structure is basically in line with what
SG5 proposed.
In terms of what use cases we received completely, so as you see the
European Blind Union submitted a use case on connectivity and
improvement of interfaces and then we received three contributions from the
U.S. on accessible electronic programme guides and digital operators and
accessible video description. As I said this group submitted accessible audio
description, subtitles and spoken subtitles use cases. China also submitted a
use case on smart TV and tablet and portable multimedia devices. Germany
they really did not focus on much on television and AV equipment. They are
looking more in to the general scope of AAL. So they delivered a
telemonitoring use case, in-house assistant and electronic butler and mobile
systems use case. We received also a couple of use cases from Japan.
Some of them are already either in a trial phase or already implemented. So
a safety check, service using a TV set and then Smartphone as Pedometer to
promote health and telemonitoring through tablet devices and then a
24-hour telemonitoring assist service which I believe is already
implemented. And then telemonitoring sensors and monitoring of the body
composition on status of a person by television.
And then also the EU research project. Universal they delivered two use
cases. Lifestyle package and traditional advisor use case and as you may
know alliance this is also a research project and what they have done is they
basically developed repository of AV standards and they extracted from the
long list of standards the relevant standards for TC100.
So concluding my presentation or our work on AAL and TC100, what we
want to do is we consider the development of functional specifications and
guidelines which focus on accessibility and use ability of TVs and connected
TVs. And what we will do is we define the user needs, especially of elderly,
visually and hearing impaired people and want to develop guidelines and
best practices in this area and then we want to develop guidelines to simplify
the accessibility of subtitles and EPG and audio description. Audio output for
onscreen displays and control play back and many of those issues already
identified. Of course, television are also relevant for other personal devices
like Smartphones and tablets and e-book readers.
So what we see here, actually in what we identified from the contributions
of use cases we received that the connected TV is not just an entertainment
device but also will be used as an intelligent hub and home gateway and we
will also support other requirements identified in the use cases which are
relevant for AAL by using televisions and the scope also include telecare and
telemonitoring activities and, of course, support the Web being an
independent living of elderly people. So TC100 will do further work in this
area and also, of course, provide input to the requirements which are
currently identified in SG5 and the work of SG5 will probably be finished in
March next year. So the final meeting is in March in Brussels. And then this
will maybe AAL related activities will probably go in to more assistance TC.
So this is basically what we are doing in TC100. The CR will be out very
soon for national Committee ballot and what we also do with our next
meeting in May that we do a bigger AAL workshop and see as this workshop
will be also hosted by CA which is the consumer electronics Association of
the U.S. that we involve more U.S. and Canadian experts in our group.
Okay. This basically concludes my presentation. If you have any questions
or comments, please.
>> YUSHI NAITO: Thank you. I indicated in the programme I think it
would be better to go through the presentation and then we have the panel
located for questions and discussion. So I would rather go to the next
presentation by Marcel Vlaming wider connection for hearing aids. He is the
technical coordinator of the European hearing aid Association and project
manager for wider connected of hearing aids and he has actually been in
several standardization organizations and responsible editor and contributor
for several IEC and ANSI centres on the hearing aid. Marcel you have the
floor.
>> MARCEL VLAMING: Thank you very much for introducing me. I
thank you for being invited for this workshop, interesting workshop to give a
presentation. My presentation will be about connection to hearing aid and
my name is Marcel Vlaming and I represent for the European hearing
Association and also called EHMA and represents the six hearing aid
manufacturers in the world. Thank you. Are working on wireless
connectivity for hearing aids and I will give you an introduction on hearing
loss on hearing aids, the connectivity of hearing aids today and the
requirements for the near future. Market drivers and the scenarios,
roadmap that we have for that and I will conclude with a summary for that.
First I give you a small introduction for hearing loss. Hearing impairment
is loss of auditive communication and that is a little bit different from just
being soft sounds are not audible. An additional thing that you have to
recognize is that high frequency sounds are also not audible and high
frequency sounds are important for speech understanding but moreover the
major problem for people with some degree of hearing impairment is the
sensitivity to background noises that will reduce speech understanding of
social condition text and that's one the major complaints that people have
been having in hearing impairment. In general it is about 10% of the
population have hearing problems. This, of course, demographic with age
and as you get older it is a natural process that you will lose the ability to
hear soft sounds but particularly for the high frequencies and for that you
will have more problems with understanding speech and have your social
context and communications by that. At present it is about that in
developed countries that about 50 to 40% of the people with a hearing loss
are using hearing aids. That means that a lot of people do not have the
possibility or do not see the need for using a hearing aid for compensating
their hearing loss.
This is in the developed countries, in the different countries even a lower
percentage, a lower percentage of those people are able to have hearing
aids. So depending on the prosperity level and the schemes of the world we
can say about 50 million hearing aid users are currently using hearing aids
worldwide.
On what hearing aids can do for you, the main function is amplification.
That is the traditional function of a hearing aid since 70 years to amplify the
soft sounds. What comes next is that you also need some sound
compression because you like to restore the loudness of sounds. So the soft
sounds audible and normal sounds will be at a normal level for you and the
loud sounds will be loud but not too loud and the next thing is you need
spectral compensation. That is by having an audiogram and compensation
is given up to 8 kilohertz for the present day hearing aids. In future we are
going to work for having hearing aids that move up to 12 kilohertz or even
beyond that. We are working on new standards to get that far. The next
very important function is to have some kind of suppression of the
background noise. That can be done by several technologies in the hearing
aids and I come also back to the presentation yesterday that is about clear
audio, clean audio and I think also for that we see future use when we have
wireless connections in which we can have separation of background and
foreground sounds. Speech enhancement is another function to facilitate
the essential requirement and help you for speech communication and
speech enhancement is one of the functions that you can find in hearing aids
and then I come to the real point for this workshop that is hearing aids have
some direct connectivity to media sources. And by that may have indistort
reception of the sound for speech understanding and having not to cope with
the background annoying sounds around. That can be done by having a
cable with a microphone, for instance. Very important of T-coil, we have FM
systems that are infrared systems and there are media hubs and these are
offered as needed and as reached. I have to say there is something to do
further on that. This picture gives you an overview just to give you an idea
of what are hearing aids. Traditional there were behind the area hearing
aids and these tend to be quite large 40 years ago. They have reduced
considerably in size because people have hearing impairment would not like
to be recognized as a hearing impaired person but recognized like a normal
communicating person and for that reason they like to have a hearing aid
and they would like to have it but they would not like to have as seen by
other people and people are going to Act accordingly to that assuming that
the person will have a communication from them. So one of the tasks of
hearing aid is make those hearing aids as small as possible. When you go to
the right, then you also see in the canal in the ear canal completely in the
ear canal and even invisible in the canal sometimes. What I would like to
point out these hearing aids they provide quite some functions and it is a
real challenge to have with small battery to have a lifetime use time for
hearing aid for at least five days. And all to integrate in a very small size.
So that puts requirements on power on the dimensions of the electronics
inside. So that is a requirement on that.
Hearing aids connectivity, what we aim for is in hearing aid connectivity
to have direct connectivity to the audio source. Hearing impaired persons
have an ability for background noise and also other also have also vulnerable
to background noise. Use cases can be found everywhere in connection with
communicating with the telephone, with audio and tablet PC and at schools,
public theaters, churches, points of sale, public announcements in nations,
airports, these are all situations people would need to have a direct
connectivity to the audio source. Solutions T-coil, FM, media gateway and
future technologies wireless connectivity. This shows you the current
system that is the magnetic induction loop, T-coil. It is an existing system
that you can find already for as long hearing aids are on the market. It is
promoted in several countries, for instance, United Kingdom is very much
promoting and also several states in the USA are also promoting the use of
T-coil and mostly found at churches and points of sales and also used
domestically at home for your television and audio equipment. There are
also regulations for that and there is hearing aid compliance directive or -- I
don't know what to say. For mobile phones to implement such a magnetic
coil in the mobile phones. So that the mobile phones will generate a
magnetic field that will allow you to connect with your hearing aids. That is
the -- that is a directive by the USA FCC. The problems today with T-coils is
that magnetic interferences from electro appliances give interferences.
When you have a magnetic loop and a power supply like this will give you
problems. It should be outside any magnetic loop system for that. So that
case quite some quality issues and sometimes the background interferences
like magnetic interference may make such a system not workable. Now the
telephone range, to 3.5 kilohertz, this always mono and it has high
installation cost in buildings because it has to be somewhere in the floor or
walls. Within construction it should be taken care of. It should require
amplifier for that. Sometimes they are not switched on or tuned to the right
thing and people may have a lot of complaints about that. Because let's say
the priest or figure in a church does not have any idea how to work with
those things. So some instructions is needed for that. But also regular
maintenance of those installations is required. Gives very limited range
because it only works inside the loop and it has limited availability because
some countries promote use for that but most countries do not and also it is
only done at some places, in United Kingdom more and more places,
introduction of those T-coil systems.
Another solution is FM system that is the first radio wireless system. The
advantage is that it is used at schools for hearing impaired persons with
professional equipment and also used at home for TC and wireless
microphones and the problems with this is it has not taken up. There is no
worldwide frequencies and it means you have to change your settings of this
radio when you are in another country. If that is possible at all in most
cases that is not possible. So when you travel from one country to another
country you may see that it will not work at the point of sales or in the
further country. Also ready it interference because there is a limited amount
of channels. Radio systems like mobile phones and other appliances. So
that's the case in some situations interferences. And main point is that FM
transmitters are not installed at public places. Therefore there is low
acceptance and not general technology that has been used.
The other solution is a wireless media gateway. Media gateways are now
introduced since five years ago. That is worn on your body in general at
your breasts with a necklace. That loop is to connect with your phone to, for
instance, Bluetooth. The advantages that it gives you good sound quality.
And Bluetooth is in general found on most mobile phones and further sound
devices. The problems with that is that you always need this device to be
worn around your neck or at least at your body. It may have problems on
interference on some Bluetooth link because in general open to 2.4 gigahertz
and a relatively narrow band and further users WiFi systems on that
Bluetooth devices. So all these compete with the same small amount of
bandwidth that is available with this 80 megahertz and all this, a lot of traffic
is done by that. So within heavily populated environments you may have
problems on that. A person -- it still works quite fine but the uptake of WiFi
and other Bluetooth devices may expect that we have -- they have
problems. There is no public access. That's public and grass roots work on
the short range to 50 meters. It can work for that. And there is no
universal standard for a bridge of a hearing aid radio system. So in general
at this moment it is a temporary solution and there are proprietary solutions
for that. This sheet gives you a drawing of that. The main parts, let's see,
okay. I point now at the screen behind me. You see the head. You see the
hearing aid and there is an inductive loop and this is drawn quite large and
in general it has range of one meter and you see the two connections with
the Bluetooth world for PCs and mobile phones. These are proprietary in
hearing aids so far with a limited range and limited range is because of
power consumption. So you have this media gateway always the need to
have this always on your body to be able to connect with your peripheral
devices like on a mobile phone and what is missing is the access to the
public world for which no transmitters are required. Remote control, when
this will be replaced by another system remote controls can be connected by
a universal system. Inductive loop issues.
For hearing aid connectivity are T-coil systems have limited quality, very
limited range and limit availability and high installation costs and systems
have no worldwide frequencies and therefore are not accepted and also have
problems with radio interference. The systems with Bluetooth need -- gives
you the -- will require extra body and will have limited range and that's a
temporary solution. Requirements for future wireless hearing aid it needs to
be integrated in hearing aid. That gives you high demands on hearing aid
battery and on the science of the hearing aid. This is extra circuitry in that
that takes place and the advances, long term T-coil can be replaced by that
radio. That can compensate for that. But still hearing aid battery power
consumption is one of the major issues. It should be useable worldwide
because you did not like to change equipment for your hearing aid when you
move around the world. So we for that worldwide spectrum for global use is
required. That spectrum should have no or low radio interference. In the
band and out the band should have other uses and not give interferences in
this band. It also should be able to be used personally at home at schools at
public places. And it should have a range from one to 50 meters for the
public places. One solution for all those different use cases. Give
acceptance as a worldwide standard or spectrum and if that is achieved then
we will have easy installation and no extra devices and no body worn things
and no amplifiers for your loop. It will give easy use and give low cost and
then you have low cost it can be achievable for all hearing aids and for many
persons.
Market life is increasing legislation for accessibility of hearing aids,
towards mobile phone our existing legislation for that in USA by the FCC. It
should be made required for churches, theaters and points of sales. And
then we can think about also about announcement systems in stations and
airports. A growing number of potential users because population is aging,
people have more expectations on electronic devices, more spending power.
They have more familiarity with technology in the future. And increasing
percentage of population require integration with existing mobile and music
technology. They expect they can connect with their mobile phones and
with the music devices that they use personally. Desire for many sectors
not to disadvantage the hearing impaired because of social concerns but also
because of market opportunities for the industry in Europe. For Europe and
worldwide. The scenario for this is at this moment we have available
spectrum in the 2.4 gigahertz band, ISM bands. It is available, it is a
relative narrow band and it is available now. It gives -- it may give in the
future congestion interference and out of band interferences. For the what
we work on is to have new worldwide spectrum in about 6 to 8 years from
now through ITU, CEBS or the word trade radio conference and should give
low clearance and gives you protection. The threats always are that kind of
spectrum should have low out of band interference. It will be a slow process
to achieve those world -- this worldwide spectrum and many stakeholders
are active in this area and in fact, we should have -- we should be granted
by owners of other spectrum at this moment to obtain that spectrum for
accessibility use. It should be one standard and could not work with many
different standards that compete with each other. And should be worldwide.
It should be something similar like Bluetooth, technologies like frequency
hopping and it should be propriety. And enables public wireless use cases.
And threats about standards it can be slow again and it may wait for the
spectrum. So one or the other we have to work in parallel for that.
Legislation can help. We have that kind of legislation currently for T-coils.
In EU we have standard is by -- it has currently not put in directive but I
expect that will be coming soon and having this legislation will create
awareness and also will create demand. And it will give you also
harmonization of technology by that. The problems are the costs of all those
developments but also of the equipment, the timing and if legislation is not
working in pace with the innovations of the industry it may also block some
innovations at some point. That can be a threat but then we have good
communication with the standards bodies and legislative bodies that may be
afforded and we expect from the after 2018 that such a system can be in
place.
Okay. Just to summarize on my presentation, to remind 50 million
hearing aid users can be much more but currently we are that far, 50 million
hearing aid users and a need for wireless connectivity and to improve speech
understanding of back ground noise and to be available at domestic public
places and schools and so and we currently have different technologies and
we have issues about quality, interference and the cost and size of hearing
aids, interfacing within the hearing aids and the other issue is the availability
of transmitters for public use. So not only in domestic areas. Required
mobile availability one standard worldwide radio spectrum and needs for
industry to make very small designs relating to chip venders, relating to
antenna size and relating to battery technology and then very important
thing that by that reducing the cost of installation and to in a hearing aid.
Okay. Thank you very much for listening to my presentation. If you have
questions Chairman we take questions now or I give the floor to you.
>> YUSHI NAITO: Thank you. Now we have time for discussion.
Shall we start on the first presentation for Ulrike. Is there any comment or
question on the first presentation? Yes.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Thank you. First is just if you can give us
more information concerning the next -- the conference next year. If you
can tell us the conference for everyone? The one that's in May next year. If
it is open and what are the goals of this conference more or less. And the
second question was much more like an open question for you but also for
the audience to see how we can carry on the appropriation that was
established between FG AVA and IEC TC100. And also if the audience has
comments on this maybe we can merge the questions to Ulrike. Thank you.
>> ULRIKE HALTRICH: Okay. Thank you Alexandra. So as for the
conference next year in Sieta we will have TC100 meetings in the week of
19th May I believe. Yes. 19th May and we have the IETF and IGF meeting
there. And the idea I am not 100% officially announced currently, is to
establish a new technical area on AAL accessibility and user interfaces. And
for that we will issue also a call for new experts and we would like to extend
the scope and the number of contributors to this area. And, of course, we
have a lot of industry participation from the U.S. already but we would also
like the JTC 1 experts and so on working on guide 71, for example, to be
involved to the ITI people involved with woman we work on mandate 376
currently and we just want to use this opportunity to be in the U.S. and, of
course, this is an open workshop. And the Focus Group on AVA is more than
welcome to attend this as well but this will be not big, big event. It is
dedicated half day, I don't know -- workshop.
>> YUSHI NAITO: Is there any other question? Comment? Okay. If
you have we can come back later and then if there are any questions for
Marcel's presentation, the second presentation.
>> PILAR ORERO: I have a question for myself. You mention in slide
3 speech enhancement. Didn't have to go to slide 3 but speech
enhancements which is in a way and that's it. Speech enhancement, slide 4.
It is not clean audio. And I was wondering if we could use -- can we use
speech enhancement for speaking -- if we can use clean audio to make the
speech, the machine understand better perhaps we could use speech
enhancement to make less mistakes in the automatic translation. What do
you think? The question is for but also for John.
>> This is John. Hello. Well, I was -- last week I was in Rome at the
(inaudible) conference which is a project for automatic subtitling and there
we also discussed this question and the answer of the experts was no. No.
They made tests and it didn't work. But I have to make a distinction, if
clean audio means that the source -- the source from the voice is taken
separately and separated from the background noise, then yes. But often
clean audio is meant to be a kind of filter at the device and if you mean
clean audio in this sense the answer is no.
>> MARCEL VLAMING: Yes, I will react on that. There is two ways to
increase speech understanding and it is to enhance the features of speech
and you have to recognize on the frame of your speech and you have to
make a model of the speech. Like you have to make a model of the noise
and that subject. So you can make a model of the speech enhancement.
Hearing aids are -- have some signal processing so they can do something
on that and they will do that. But I must also said the advantage that it
gives is not making a very big difference. It may give you a few DB or
signal-to-noise ratio in improvement but not so much more. So when you
have clean speech when you are at foreground and background signal
separate and I learned it yesterday from this, this is active ongoing for
standardization. When we have a wireless connection and when we have,
for instance, then we can use clean speech or we can make the mix in the
hearing aid itself, for instance. In addition when we have two channels two
serial wireless connections which is not in T-coils and not FM systems also
from that you can do some more speech enhancements because we have
left and right. So you can in fact, localize in the middle and Mr. Ito has
shown yesterday a demonstration of that. A good demonstration for that.
So that I can give you maybe also 6 dB of enhancements of speech in that
way. That technology exists already in hearing aids. In that case the left
and right hearing aids should cooperate together and also then localize
where the main speaker is and by that it can do some noise suppression and
enhance the speaker position for that. The difficulty for that you need a
wireless connection and need a lot of processing power. So there is -- for
that you have to simplify the models for that. But when you have clean
speech and clean background that makes life much easier. So that's one of
the advantages that I have not put in my slides but that is one of the
improvements that you can make for televisions and music saturation with
speech to improve further down the road.
>> PETER LOOMS: Good morning, Peter Looms Chair of now
completed Focus Group. In the course of our work for the last three years,
nearly three years we have been focusing on end to end solutions. Taking
the source to the person who needs to use audiovisual media. Yesterday we
heard about clean or clear audio and enhancing at the source and you
explained very well whether we can separate say the voice from the
background at the source. Then we have in your presentation the final link.
Can we improve the quality of the information going from say a television
set or a computer to the hearing aid directly? What is interesting in an age
of multi-channel audio when it comes to say Ulrike's field with consumer
electronics the increasing complexity and we are hearing from the
broadcasters when we have multi-channels or even stereo, how do we make
sure that the perceived sound levels are okay and it seems -- it is even more
important these days to check what the end user actually gets. Too many
sources where things can go wrong. So it would seem to be as you were
pointing out Marcel, perhaps we have to think about this slogan, keep it
simple stupid. Go for as simple as possible solutions because if we don't find
relatively simple solutions the chances of things not working suddenly
increase. Would you agree this is a potential risk?
>> MARCEL VLAMING: What you say, what is potential risk?
>> PETER LOOMS: Real risk.
>> MARCEL VLAMING: Sorry?
>> PETER LOOMS: The risk of intelligibility not being the case. A
month I was talking to people from the BBC who were telling me about their
setup end to end for playing out stereo and multi-channel audio for some of
their television channels. And they hadn't realized that had been had
changed the settings. So the centre was in fact, three decibels lower than
they thought it would be because somebody had got the settings wrong. So
if you have an organization with that kind of reputation who make mistakes,
what about the organizations which don't have that kind of expertise and
then it goes all the way through end to end to the source to the final user
and then the user can't understand the killing fields or one of the
Scandinavian television series because the audio is not particularly
intelligible. It may apply to people like myself who have to strain to
understand what's being said.
>> MARCEL VLAMING: Yes, I fully agree. I fully agree that an end
user, particularly a hearing problem you should have the optimal mix. The
point is something to be in control of the end user or something by the
professional to set up front or to have some intelligent processing that
selects the optimal levels, of the balance between that. I have to say that
hearing aids in itself already do a task on that. They have compression
technology in it that assures that the loudness perception from soft to loud.
So that curve on what you input and what you really perceive as loudness
that is compensated according to the hearing loss of a person. So and that
can differ between persons. Can differ even when you have a similar
audiogram that loudness perception curve can be different. It would then
challenge when this is all based on one channel. It would then channel
when you have two channels as your proposal in which you can influence the
mix of that and if you can assure that background really is back ground and
we have to assume it should be, we should not have mistakes by the BBC to
refer background and foreground sounds, of course. If you have a clear
separation on that then you can much more accurate make a mix which is
optimal for that hearing person and that makes a difference. Just to say
people with a similar audiogram they may have more problems in sectors to
noise ratio which may be a deficit of 3 dB but maybe up to 90 dB for the
same audiogram. That's something that has to be tested by the audiologist
to make the best setting for that. That can be done by a hearing aid but not
always done but that's a possibility to adjust for that and that's one of the
professional parts that should be programmed in to hearing aid. So the
hearing aid should have the functionality for that to work on that and
professional to make in conjunction with hearing impaired person to find out
what is the optimal setting for such a control. So there is some work to do.
But the potential I think is in this personal device which is in hearing aid. So
you can personalize your sound in that way. Maybe also comes to television
and other equipment that they can do it also at some level. I don't know
whether Ulrike can say something about this.
>> PETER LOOMS: Just a short additional comment. If we look at
the work over the last 30 to 40 years with access services the first way was
putting it in to the television signal, subtitles. So one size fits out. So
everyone had to see it whether they needed it or not. The second phase
was like a closed captioning or optional subtitles for the deaf and
hard-of-hearing or audio description where you could select it but then often
it was something which was decided at the source and then it was just the
option of turning things on or off. Perhaps the current generation which isn't
an alternative but a compliment but for most people we can probably do
something which works for say 90% of the users but for the last 10% we
may be able to customize. What we were seeing yesterday was, for
example, HBTV was to customize the subtitles and the option of doing audio
description where in the device you can do the mixing and in your case with
hearing aids, some of these things can be done in hearing aid itself. When
we had a workshop in India the decision makers were horrified. They said
we have 380 million television households. If you just have one in a
thousand households which has a problem, we have millions of people
ringing to well, hundreds of thousands of people ringing to a call centre. So
in that kind of situation they were saying it is important to do as much as
you can centrally and then say for the minority who need the customization
to have this as an optional extra but not as an alternative and not to rely too
much on too many of these optional solutions. Do you think that's a
reasonable strategy or should we just go for that personalization or
customization?
>> MARCEL VLAMING: Thank you Peter. I would like to react on
that. Marcel Vlaming from EHMA. I think you put a right point for
discussion. We are working on use cases and we have, for instance, also
one connection with audio equipment or television. You can see that you
maybe watching your alum to television and things may be right or you can
personalize it for that but when you are getting older or your family there
are more people in the same room watching television and if you have one
or more other people with hearing problems they may need an individual
setting of this let's say optimal balance with background and foreground and
noise reduction and things like that. So that is something that should be
done in this case in the hearing aid party. So when you would have
production of the sound to the loud speakers it may not be right for
everyone. So you have to have to take a compromise for that. If you put it
on individual hearing aid or even on headsets people may use headsets, of
course, to have their optimal settings even when you are having no hearing
problems. Then it should be in some way preset, there can be a problem
that if you give the control on what is your optimal setting it should be
relatively easy for the end user to make a selection. So it should be simple.
It should be maybe something like three presets you can have on your
headset for normal hearing or for hearing aid wearer to have three
programmes which gives the optimal setting for that.
It should -- and I think in addition it should be programmed by a
professional which has some test problems to find out what is optimal
setting. If you give it to the end user for their own control, then it may get
problems and that I think for televisions you are -- you can have some
contrasts and things like that and I must say that I think the present day
television sets do I think much better than in the past but you may still have
optimal settings that you cannot accommodate everyone by that. And by
sounds you can do something because you have your personal sound device.
So in that way you have a possibility to do better than just having a
representation through the speakers. Thank you.
>> YUSHI NAITO: Are there any other questions? Yes. Alexandra.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Thank you. I have kind of a question for
myself. In the slide I think it was towards the end you were mentioning the
standards of Bluetooth, like you were saying proprietary like something like
that. Okay. Thank you. So I was wondering since you have been working
with us since almost the beginning, within the Focus Group, what I want you
to comment on proprietary standards versus open and interoperable
standards and what we are trying to do here. So for the benefit of maybe
many stakeholders, all the lobby industry, work maybe more on open and
interoperable standards rather than prototype standards? Thank you.
>> MARCEL VLAMING: Thank you for raising this question. In fact I
give you three options that we discussed within the industry. We would like
to have a worldwide standard and how you get a worldwide standard then
you can piggyback on Bluetooth standards which is more or less an open
standard. So that's available for everyone. But there is also the possibilities
if that is not working right or if too slow, then the industry works on
proprietary solutions and we -- before you have seen this necklace device,
that's a proprietary standards. I think five of them have this media gateway
and five different standards made them on. So next step within industry is
to unify this to one, and not in this case for a necklace but for a direct
connection, of course, and there are possibilities to have intermediate to
even have proprietary standard. That is something we like to forward
because we need later on steps to more open standards because I would say
as hearing aid industry and users of that that you may profit better from a
mainstream solution than just having only a solution that's only applicable
for hearing aids.
So these wireless connection should also be -- can be a starting point for
headset manufacturers, for instance, for adopt for the same one. And I can
tell you that kind of talks are there and there is also a loss of consumability
in that because people manufacturers they have installed production lines
for existing equipment. So they -- so when we talk about these kinds of
standards we have some opposition of established industries for headsets
that would say this may threat our things and we try to point out this case
much more possibilities and gives you accessibility for a lot of people with
hearing problems which you don't have at this moment and we in fact,
introduce a new technology on which you have to replace anyhow your
technologies after ten or 20 years in some way. So in the industry world
there is always a discussion should we do it by proprietary wide or we take a
little bit longer and have an open standards and that's something that gives
us a -- I call it difficult solution to take. Thank you.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Can I comment back briefly? Yesterday
Michael when he was opening he was talking about the business even in this
area. In an event like this, a small event where you have industry
stakeholders sitting besides university or academia and we can discuss that
industry up to now thought that maybe a fast track of their standard is
better but maybe in the long term, and take in to account the scale economy
if you involve many more members and a growing population member may
be in the longer term everyone can profit much more. So maybe you can
take the example of the hearing aids. Maybe I don't know, in some
countries in Africa maybe are the top. Open standards then you can sell
many more wireless in countries where they can't afford them now. In the
long term there will be a benefit for everyone. Thank you.
>> MARCEL VLAMING: Thank you. I would like to react to that. I
think that's a really good point. I think in the beginning the industry has to
make developments and they have to recover their costs for that but on the
long run after five years of technologies on the market then in general the
costs go down and in fact, and also the members are counting. The number
of devices and number of integrated circuits if that is only one million to say
annually that is relatively small. But if you have ten million or even 50
million every year and then I refer to mobile phones, mobile phones are how
many millions sold every month I would say. They have integrated circuits
that are really cheap at this moment because of the high quality. Wireless
connection what we mean is having mobile phones integrate those circuits
as well and that means millions by month and that means you will make that
development cost will be recovered much quicker and the hearing aid
industry can wire those circuits much cheaper. In the beginning the extra
costs material costs can be 10 Euro extra but in the end it might be only 50
cents and that makes a big difference.
>> ULRIKE HALTRICH: If I may also comment on this. I mean when
I listen to the clear or clean audio discussion here, many receivers already
have this as an integrated functionality but the voices are made clear and
background noise is eliminated. So it is integrated in to the receiver so you
cannot wait for the AV content basically forever when you sit with a user
groups. There are certain requirements and you need to fulfill and basically
for the benefit of everyone. So when you have mainstream equipment it is
there. It is not in every model but in many models already available. So it
is there.
>> YUSHI NAITO: Yes.
>> MIA AHLGREN: Just a short question from the slide that we can
see right now where EU directives will mentioned. What directives are you
talking about?
>> MARCEL VLAMING: I am not an expert on EU directive us. In
general we see this as sometimes as a threat because you never know
what's going to be imposed on industry or whatever in production and things
like that. But FCC has a directive or USA directive made by the FCC. That's
the named the heck or means hearing aid compliance. And that's worked
out in the requirement for mobile phones to have at least two models that
have a T-coil compatibility inside. That means that they have to add extra
components within a mobile phone to generate the magnetic field for a T-coil
which costs at least one Euro or two Euros access for those models to make
and they don't like it but they have to do it and I think it is right that
legislation is asking for such a thing. Otherwise those models won't be
available and it is just too costly and the industry of mobile phones would
not pay attention to that. For the EU we have two directives. There is a
new ETSI standard that has the same specification of requirements that you
can make for T-coil. I forgot the number for that. I have been working on
that to make it compatible with the USA situation. Mobile phones can have
the same technology across the oceans and I understood that ETSI was
made to finally I think on some questions within the EU to have accessibility
for hearing aids and they have asked for this standard by ETSI and I don't
know -- I do not know exactly when they would proceed further on that to
make a mandatory directive for mobile phone manufacturers to have that
kind of models in Europe. At present you also find those models in Europe
already but it is not mandatory. That's the difference and i don't know
exactly what the EU is doing on that. Maybe you know better.
>> ULRIKE HALTRICH: If I may comment on this. In the U.S. they
had a problem there were this immunity requirements when they introduce
GSM a long time ago and but -- so people got really very strong noise in the
ear but we in Europe we have the EMC directive which is mandatory in
Europe and so I don't think that we really have the problem. So if the
immunity requirements are very clear then we probably have sometimes
according to you but we have the directive in the U.S.
>> MARCEL VLAMING: Yes, immunity is already a long time and this
is T-coil compatibility issue and they are in the same standards. I have to
say that's correct. But it is a different aspect of immunity. In this way I call
it the connection between T-coil and the other one. And also specifies for
that immunity levels but it is primarily then requires some level of sensitivity
of the T-coil, the fields generated by the mobile phone and for the hearing
aids. So that they meet each other. So in United States they have
requirements for what I call T 1 to T 4 requirements for the immunity and
then they have magnetic requirements also M 1 to M 4 and I think in USA
requirement is at minimum M 3 and that is something that is recommended
in the ETSI standard to have the same level as the USA as a minimum.
>> YUSHI NAITO: Thank you. Any other -- you want the floor? Yes.
>> Good morning, everyone. I am Jan from the European
Commission. I don't deal with standardization but I believe I can give you
some overview. I think the mandate you had in mind it is mandate 376 I
am not wrong the standardization, I think it was mentioned. Ann the
directive that is being now in the state of drafting is the so-called European
accessibility Act. It had a very positive feedback from the impact
assessment board. So it was approved in May. And now it is at the stage,
yes, it is still very early stage as you know the mandate of the commission
in the parliament will expire next year. So I am not sure whether it is still
possible that the directive adopted within this mandate but in any case we
expect it to be adopted very soon. If you like to have any -- I cannot go in
to much detail but the directive aims -- will aim to approximate the
legislation in all the Member States as regards accessibility requirements of
goods and services and will cover public available telephone he services,
smart mobile devices and digital broadcasting services passenger transport
services and more and more fields and banking services, e-commerce and
e-books and a very wide ranging directive and still a very drafting stage. So
I cannot go really in to detail.
>> MARCEL VLAMING: Yes, think this discussion is more to highlight
the legislation and will play a role in this. So in one way it can enhance the
process to have something imposed, to be fulfilled by the industry. So that
goods are getting on the market or are developed to get on the market. But
that is the advantage. But it may also be a threat at some moment that we
are now thinking about how to convince the FCC that also wireless solutions
are there and that wireless solutions may get a dominate one in the future of
taking the T-coil. We have to start early with that. To at least start with
that. And the FCC is quite direct on that and they probably will say okay, we
listen to the Congress. Is the Congress like this? And that is based on
consumer's actions then we can change it. So we will not change this. It is
right away and we understand that. So but we have to find out the process
that a new innovation can be made additive to existing legislation for T-coils.
So what we would like something like T-coils is a manned tear thing in the
USA by the FCC HEC rules but if you like that to be widened that also
wireless connections also will meet to the same requirements for
accessibility. And in the beginning they are -- they would not like to do this
directly I have to say. So that may be a bit of a blocking point. So but we
think on this, it will not hinder use directly because at some point when the
industry has also some power to introduce things at reasonable prices and
have equipment around and maybe also in use it in the mainstream field
that at some point de facto it will be an alternative and say I don't need this
T-coil because we have 100%, 200% better solution. Maybe eight years
from now that this situation may be there but if the FCC would say there is
no way for that then it may be a bit of blocking because people making
investments for new technology will say yes, but will it work out. We try to
convince the mobile phone manufacturers that they could have a cheaper
wireless solution instead of having a T-coil which means a real coil be
mounted in mobile phone and at this moment they say okay this is
something we may expect in five years from now but not now. It is a
difficult issue.
>> AXEL LEBLOIS: Axel Leblois. We have seen lately a lot of
competition for accessibility features. And Persons with Disabilities such as
vision impairment or physical disabilities there are a lot of features that
make it much easier to use mobile technology. And already happened not
because of Persons with Disabilities were being targeted was because those
features helped everyone in daily lives. All users benefit from text-to-speech
and those features and you can see that Android, for instance, at the 4.1
they do not accept handset users without all those accessibility features to
be fully implemented in the handsets. It means that Google in a sense they
have to have accessible features in all the handsets outside the world. My
question is in that particular space that you just covered what are the
features that could be actually useable by all users or being very helpful to
other users and persons with hearing impairments that would create market
competition for these features?
>> MARCEL VLAMING: If I may give a reaction to that, Marcel
Vlaming, EHMA. I said already mobile phones are in the major counter site
to a hearing aid for this technology at this moment as industry sees but also
say consumer electronics is the other one. We think that if the such a
standard for accessibility by a wireless connection if that is also available
directly or in a variant for headsets that you have a large area which helps
to introduce that new technology, and the only point is at this point they
have the standards in Bluetooth area. And there are -- and handsets -- I
can introduce you a problem for that. They work with car systems, for
instance. And they have car systems they work on Bluetooth but you car
has to work 50 years something like that. That automotive industry is a bit
conservative on accepting new solutions. In that way be very careful when
you introduce something that this can be accepted by them and not
overtaking directly the existing solutions. You have to balance within that
and that all comes to a mobile phone. They have to serve both and they
have to serve within an automotive environment and domestic environments
with headsets and accessibility with hearing impaired persons. New
technology should be a better technology and convincing to other industry to
take it over in some way and allow the specific features that you need for
hearing aids be respected. And that's -- the hearing aid industry tries to
take initiative directly to have those requirements for the hearing aid users
directly in to it and then we would welcome, it is taken over in a broader
perspective for headsets but there is a lot of players in that will have their
say and concerns in the beginning and that process has started already and
that is something that makes life not easy to say but interesting to do.
>> JUNTO OHKI: This is Junto Ohki. The slide, the second one I
have update about consideration in ITU-R. Just try to make it very -- sorry.
I just try to make it very briefly. In the ITU-R in the working party 5 A they
study to consideration of revision of the ITU-R recommendation, it is for this
technical specification of the wireless hearing aid and also they started
discussion about possibility of the kind of -- the not one frequency. It may
not be one frequency but discussing like a frequency range but it means that
it is tuneable in the one device. So I am not sure if it would be resulted in
the -- as a quick as you said but in the ITU-R and they started discussion
about the frequency spectrum for the wireless hearing aid. Thank you.
>> Good morning. My name is Brian Kozi and I represent ETSI and I
am Chair group of 5 A. We have very good wishes and a lot of help from
organizations and groups. Unfortunately specifying actual frequencies is
difficult and we will have another meeting in November and I am hoping
proposals from USA and France which will help us. Thank you very much.
>> ULRIKE HALTRICH: Thank you. I would like to come back to what
is the phone industry is currently doing. So if you go to that side of the
mobile manufacturers Forum, and this is -- they have created a database
basically for all kinds of manufacturers who are involved in this mobile
manufacturers Forum and from customer point of view you can then say
okay I have hearing problems and I have vision problems and dexterity and
cognition problems and so on and depending on this you can even say under
hearing problems that needs hearing aid compatibility: So there are a lot of
features listed and then they suggest a couple of phones which may fulfill
your requirements. So this database is one way also to help consumers to
assist consumers to find the right mobile phone. And this would be also
extended to tablets and so on. So this is really a database which I can only
recommend each user to look at when they are trying to find their right
phone.
>> YUSHI NAITO: Thank you.
>> ULRIKE HALTRICH: This is the mobile manufacturers Forum, that
side.
>> AXEL LEBLOIS: Yeah, in fact, several telecom regulators have
made the guide database available. FCC and the Australian regulators. The
question I was asking was really about economic, industrial standpoint. If
there were some broader market usage, some very important features
beyond the market of deaf persons that would create more action and more
probably competition to actually provide those features and I am again
referring to the similar situation we had for the Visually Impaired person or
physically impaired person where those features are remarkable on mobile
phones now and never happen without those features being available to all
users in all types of situations.
>> YUSHI NAITO: So it is close to the end of our time. And I would
like to also mention briefly in IEC we are thinking that the collaboration
among the standardization, these are really necessary to avoid the
duplication of work. And also thinking of the user's benefit. It should be
better to have unified or not -- may not be -- anyway it should be used at
international and you don't have to change the device or, for instance, when
you travel in different regions. So in that sense the collaboration among
standardization organizations is much more important from now on and also
I would like to add one thing, there are many developments made in the
area of ETSI. For example, hearing aid (inaudible) but also, for example, if
it includes automatic level control inside and if you use that aid in tandem to
the telephone, the telephone system may have also (inaudible) control and
those are thinking to make a good performance but sometimes as a result it
may compete to each other where you may not get a good performance. So
end to end quality of experience now Study Group 12 is -- that is also
important. So in this sense I think the collaboration among the
standardization activities is very important. That is my comment.
Okay. So with that can I close the session and thank you very much for
the good presentations and thank you very much for the good discussion.
So please give big hand to the presenters and the questioners.
(Applause.)
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: I think we will reconvene at 10:20. Thank
you. 10:20.
(Coffee break).
>> PETER LOOMS: To our colleagues in Boulder, Colorado, we are
ready to start. Good morning, around welcome back from the coffee break.
We are going to look at a session where we examining some case stories.
And this session has case stories from China, from Argentina and Brazil.
And because we want to avoid Mr. Murphy taking part we have in fact,
prerecorded both the presentations from Argentina and Brazil and we think
because of that it probably won't be necessary to use the recordings. But
regardless of what Murphy does we have a capability of making sure that the
presentations can be done. So the lineup is first of all, Dongxiao Li on my
right from Zhejiang University in China and she is going to be talking about
the current situation for what in Chinese is called barrier free media and the
initial focus will be on making television accessible. After that we will Natalia
Laube on line from Buenos Aires she made sure the bed waking capability
that we heard about yesterday we will make sure she is awake and she will
be talking about the use of unconventional resources to get media
accessibility off the ground for television for web for other things at the
Ministry of Education there.
And the third presentation is from Gabriela Campedelli who is Sao Paulo
Brazil and she is joining us from an academic institution and she works
closely with -- the three cases I would like you to think about represent
different stages of development. We will be looking first at China which has
got started where we are looking at Argentina where they are looking at
implementation of access services on digital television. And then we will be
hearing from Gabriela Campedelli in Brazil a country that has a fairly good
history of doing captioning but the challenges that you face as at accessible
media agenda start to mature. What kinds of issues emerge when you
move from doing pilots to doing regular services. It is a great pleasure for
me to work with Dongxiao Li who I have only known for just over a year.
And she is going to be talking about the current situation challenges and
actions in China. Welcome Dongxiao Li.
>> DONGXIAO LI: Thank you Peter. And thank you Alexandra. And
good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And thank you for giving me this good
chance to learn and to introduce something about China. Today my topic is
to accessibility in China. We translated in to free barrier. And first of all, we
should see the audience demographics, actually mention first that it is a
research of my project from the three years ago I have been doing this for
more than three years. It is a research result. So the demographics is as
follows: You can see ->> PETER LOOMS: Your notes.
>> DONGXIAO LI: Okay. There are certain media visual and
impaired persons in China and our growth you can see 450,000 brand, 1.35
million individuals and I say maybe the prestigious is not high but China has
very large population. So the visually and hearing impaired person the
population is very large. And there are 27.8 million persons in China have
the serious hearing impairment. It is about 2.1%. And new growth is
30,000 are born deaf and 32 to 50,000 have hearing impairments.
Demographic as a number come from the 2006 investigation from the nation
disabled unit.
And our survey we conducted the investigation in 2010 as a sample come
from the Zhejiang University worldwide. We conducted a survey about the
hearing and visually is impaired person and the result is that TV is most
widely used medium. You can see 90% of hearing impaired and Visually
Impaired person use TV, I mean watch TV every day almost. TV is one of
the views of information in their daily lives, with subtitles. I mean for those
with hearing impairments. Those are the result from our investigation.
And the most diversity area is programme news and TV documents and
entertainment. And the main mode of information education in its broader
sense and Q time with entertainment. Most with disabilities -- this results,
the people with hearing visual impairment have almost the same habits of
watching TV as common people and more than 90% responded with hearing
disabled indicated that they need subtitles to understand TV content better.
In particular news programmes and sports programmes. Especially
mentioned a lot about Olympic games. There is no subtitles on TV when live
-- in the life programmes.
Respondent show modest dissatisfaction with Chinese TV programmes
and persons with visual impairment are more satisfied than views with
hearing impairment. And we also conduct investigation about the service of
accessibility of TV in China. First of all it is a TV captioning. If TV
programmes we conducted the top ten channels in China. All of these
channels are worldwide. Word -- national wide channels and more half the
TV programmes has captioning. There are a lot of live programmes in news
and sports. And to the CC TV, searching channel is news channel.
Captioning individual around 24.43% and sports channel is TV 5 is only
1.7% is the lowest. Captioning height for the TV series and cartoons. Live
broadcast constitute serious challenging for captioning in China. In fact,
there are some trials in TV, they want to do some live captions in CC TV new
series but I am told that there are a lot of -- if they are to make mistakes.
They are not to do this in their programme.
And our TV captioning in China is currently open. No closed captioning
have been available to date. There are maybe there are technical reasons
for this. And as I know there are about ten problems to do ten analog TV in
to digital TV but there is still no closed captioning system in this yet.
The increasing available of integrated broadcast broadband TVs also
known as smart or connected TV will remove this technical barrier. Maybe in
the future will know clear roadmap about it. Here is a typical subtitles in
Chinese TV. It is a very popular TV series called June jong because it is
translated in to English. It is open subtitles.
Second is the language on TV. A lot of TV channels in China. About 1300
TV channels. There are 150 broadcasters and language programmes is
about ten persons but most of the TV programmes are local TV channels. I
should mention later, yeah, the main TV show which is the language to be
news, 80% of total are ten minutes (inaudible). But since 2011 I should
mention that there is very popular news programme in CC TV, central TV in
China called Gutnto. It is -- with the language interpretations. This
programme is 60 minutes long and broadcast at 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. is prime
time. And language programmes shows sign language in small window at
the bottom of the main screen like this and I should mention that in fact,
some local channel use Adventa to show their language also but from my
investigations some audiences do not like because there is no official
impression of -- in the Adventa. So it is not very popular in China. The real
news is a real person and a small window and the survey is audio description
record on TV. In fact, there is no current -- currently there is no AD service
on TV in main land China but there is some trials using in the view. As I
know there are some Shanghai film industry produced about it ten films with
AD annually. It is cooperator with national library of China and national
disabled union. But it is not very widely. And AD is often in Hong Kong and
Taiwan but not in main land. And issues very few people have ever heard
about AD. Don't know anything about it.
And next is legislation. In April 2008 the Chinese Government get the
Chinese law about the disabled people. Named as people's of Republic on
protection of disabled persons. In this law there is lines to regulate some -a media accessibility second paragraph. Benefit provisions in the law that
local Governments and local organizations should take measures to promote
TV accessibility including producing sign language to TV programmes. That's
why almost all sign language TV programmes in local channels because
there is a law. And to broadcasting features about disabled people and
promoting sub titles in TV views. Legislation, I think there is some
challenges new face China in media accessibility. The first one is only open
captioning in TV programmes. Not closed captioning. And the people told
me that it is a good chance to add to change the existing from open to
closed because it is in the chain of switching the analog in to the digital
ones. Yes. And no captioning on live TV programmes technical challenges
to produce them, mistakes and delays not very well and no AD services in
Chinese programmes to date and the quality of the language programmes is
low. The language provisions do not match the needs of the audience.
From my investigations that the audience do not like the design language
programmes provided in TV, because our news provides delayed a lot
currently.
So which -- in my university I applied a research project for the national
education department. I got some funds and I compose a team, my
colleague and I and some students, Ph.D. students are doing media
programmes and but our area is a little narrow. I mentioned it so some of
the guests in our conference that because my area is communication, do not
know technology very well. So I am doing some cooperation with
technology engineering, yeah, yeah, and we did launch investigations in
2010 and we plan to do some investigations among our Chinese national
wide to collect more data and we held a conference named media
accessibility workshop in 2012 in Hungjo and details are there and give us a
lot of help. First to raise awareness of media accessibility in China and
cooperations our university and -- do some cooperation with other
universities and Government and social organizations international and
technology sharing which we are doing now. And we are planning to do a
pilot next year but I have not very clear on that now. So that's all for today.
Thank you for listening. Thanks.
(Applause.)
>> PETER LOOMS: Thank you Dongxiao Li. Thank you very much.
So that's the first case. A group of people working together, it is a very
inspiring in context with the -- your NGO contacts and the meeting that you
held in December last year. So this is the beginning. And I think the next
step is to hear the experience if we can do from Natalia Laube in Buenos
Aires because they are a couple years further down the track. Natalia, are
you on line and can you actually hear us? What do we have to do?
>> NATALIA LAUBE: Hi. Can you hear me?
>> PETER LOOMS: Yes, we can hear you and I will just put on your
slides here so that we can do that. So you just tell me when you want to
move on to the next slide. So it is the first slide, the cover with a title of
your talk is now on the screen. Please go ahead.
>> NATALIA LAUBE: Yes, I can see it in the camera.
>> PETER LOOMS: Great. So please you are welcome.
>> NATALIA LAUBE: Okay. Then hi everyone. My name is Natalia
Laube and I am in charge of accessibility actions in EDUCAR state society of
the national ministry in Argentina. This is a short presentation because we
are newcomers in accessibility. Okay. I will make a short presentation
about who we are. EDUCAR has an educational website for students but
primarily for teachers and three TV channels. In Quintro was the first
channel and half of programming consists of known productions and the
other half is acquired educational content. We buy a lot of content of BBC.
It is small frequent topics are national and work like history, mathematics,
sciences social science. In short we buy and we produce educational and
cultural content.
Pacapaca is a channel for kids. It is the only channel for Argentina and
Latin American girls and boys that is produced in Argentina. We have a lot
of channels for children in Argentina but all of them are produced mainly in
the United States. And the portby is the first Argentina channel dedicated to
sports. And last year we transmitted the Olympic games and next slide,
please. Okay. As I said before I am currently working in the accessibility
area. We created this year last year because we knew we had to give a
response to provisions of the new audiovisual communication services law.
This law includes an Article that has specific guidelines for audiovisual
accessibility and as public channels we are committed to be respectful with
this law. It is one of the first countries Argentina in Latin America to have a
specific law for accessibility and, of course, we have in find Articles 8 and 9
of Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities but our own
regulation is the Argentinean. In the next slide you will find some important
dates regarding accessibility in Argentina. We are as i said very newcomers.
In the year 2000 the public television conducted the first experiences in
closed caption but it was nine years later that the topic was inspired in the
agenda. A year after that In Quintro one of our channels put in action its
first experience with closed caption and audio description. In 2012 specific
accessibility area was created in EDUCAR to systematize the hearing
impaired and the Government launched accessible decoders for digital
television. There will be free for people who can't buy them. These
decoders provide screen reader system up to 8 audio channels for a different
audio descriptions. A larger remote control that than the usual ones and the
ability to precise on the letter box on closed captioning. Besides this little
improvements the state of affairs in Argentina is not the best because we
noticed that the objectives of the law are executed slowly and the companies
that offer closed captioning and audio description are not offering the best
possible services. Only closed captioning is being offered because it is
cheaper even more prerecorded programmes and that a solution has only
been found for Buenos Aires and not for the whole country. Next slide which
means that we can produce closed caption and audio description but
probably only hearing impaired in Buenos Aires can see what we produce
and not the entire country.
So last year we decided to avoid private companies and start working
with universities. We are trying to have their own TV channels and their
national plan, plan for (inaudible). That means both notes national plan and
we are already working with six public universities at moment. Two of which
are creating audio description, two closed captioning and two sign language.
The learning process is not fast but channels of the national education
ministry we believe in the project because we know we are creating specific
know how and job opportunities. We have a lot of film and arts students
and we ensure that the services are being produced properly. Along with
that we create awareness about being inclusive and we are reinverting state
resources in the state because in Argentina National Universities are public
and are free. We are buying new equipment to start the admission of closed
caption and audio description for digital TV next year. Meanwhile we are
working on different actions. Next slide, please. Okay. Then we are
working in the production of over 400 hours of online captioning that can be
seen in our Web site and we are working on the incorporation of sign
language and live closed caption for the board. Our first experience was in
live captioning last year for the Olympic games. And we are also working in
international agreements for sharing content and accessibility services and
creating more national agreements with universities.
That's a little bit of what we are doing. Okay. If you have any doubts we
can speak. You can ask me questions or I don't know Peter, if you want I
tell something more.
>> PETER LOOMS: Thank you very much. What I suggest because
we never know if Murphy will interfere perhaps if there are any questions
from the floor in Geneva or if we have any questions on line we could take
them now. Questions to do with your current activities. I would like to start
by asking what do you regard as the major challenge, the major difficulty
you are facing. Of course, economic challenges but what do you think are
the biggest challenges to actually turning your vision of accessible media in
to a reality in Argentina?
>> NATALIA LAUBE: Okay. I think most challenge is that now two
systems are co-existing in Argentina. We have an analog TV, 80% in
Argentina have analog TV and digital TV is very, I don't know how to say but
only few people have a digital TV and we have to create solution for both
systems and this is very difficult because we create a solution for the digital
TV because we know it is the future but a lot of people can't receive our
audio description and our closed captioning because they have analog
solutions.
>> PETER LOOMS: You also mentioned when we discussed this that
you have some difficulties when your television signals leave the
Metropolitan area. There are some difficulties getting the access services
outside of Buenos Aires when you are doing digital TV, is that correct?
>> NATALIA LAUBE: Yes, this is a problem for engineers because I
don't know how it will be a solution but in this moment most people in -- for
-- which have decoders for digital TV can receive our closed caption in
Buenos Aires but the entire country do not receive our closed caption.
>> PETER LOOMS: So it is something to do with what happens to the
television signal when it goes around the country and whether some of those
digital services are being lost along the way. I would like to ask if there are
any questions from the people in the room. John Linder he is from Swiss
text here in Switzerland.
>> John: I would like to ask you Natalia, the following question, do
you intend to do some exchanges with other Spanish speaking countries?
>> NATALIA LAUBE: I had conversations with people in Spain but in
Latin America in general the situation is not the best. We have a little
exchange with the Captiva a company in the states who works for Latin
people in the states but in Latin America I don't know other people who are
working in accessibility.
>> PETER LOOMS: Thank you Natalia. Are there other questions
from the floor here in Geneva or other people asking questions online?
Nobody online. Anybody else? If not, I think we should thank Natalia for
getting up so early in the morning to be with us and sharing her experience.
Perhaps you got a chance to go back to bed again before you have to go to
work. Thank you very much Natalia. A quick round of applause.
(Applause.)
>> PETER LOOMS: And now I am hoping that we managed to wake
up Gabriela Campedelli in Sao Paulo.
>> GABRIELA CAMPEDELLI: Hi can you hear me?
>> PETER LOOMS: Yeah, we can.
>> GABRIELA CAMPEDELLI: Hi good morning, all. And thank you for
being here well, in Geneva and thank you Peter. So okay I can't see the
slides. I am going to popularize here. Good morning, and thank you. So I
am going to present today access services for TV, challenges in the provision
of live closed captioning in Brazil and from (inaudible) university of Sao
Paulo where we do research in audiovisual media and I also work for TV
network but my main research in accessibility goes to academic research.
So I would like to talk about Brazil for awhile. It is a huge country located in
South America. We speak Brazilian Portuguese and we have a huge
population as it is in live and we have a huge area and we have 80% with
special needs. Many of them are deaf and so TV is still the main
communication system. 98% of country news, TV is the main source of
information. We have many Internet surfing and like about 100 million
people in Internet but not all in broadband. So let's go to slide 3. So in
slide 3 we still working on analog broadcasting. We have some digital
broadcasting around the country. Many big cities have digital but few people
can receive it. So how does broadcasting work in Brazil? We don't have a
network operator. We have all local stations. So all the stations are local
stations and we have one main local station which broadcasts, affiliate that
rest broadcasts the programming from the main station. So we have this
affiliate model. And digital TV has started in 2007 and analog planned for
2006 but we have an option to extent the deadline. So digital TV is still in
discussion in Brazil because it is a big country and we have a problem with
adoptions here. So still in conversation.
Let's go to slide I think 4, yeah. Slide 4. So when we are talking about
the accessibility services it is very important to know which kind of
programming we are doing in -- and if they are prerecorded or live
programming. So, for instance, news and current affairs, as well as live
programming. So we provide live closed captioning. General entertainment
sometimes they are live and sometimes they are prerecorded. So
sometimes we provide live and sometimes prerecorded. Everyone says okay
Telanovelas they are prerecorded closed caption. When we have available
time to provide prerecorded closed captioning sometimes we have weather
conditions, and things like this happens and the chapter is ready just after
going -- just after to be broadcast. So we preprepare closed captioning and
broadcast it live. We have prerecorded soaps and series and movies, most
of them are from United States and they are all -- ask us for everything. We
have shows that are live and music shows live and sometimes prerecorded.
So in slide 5, well, as we said before we have many, many people with
special needs. And 5 million of them are deaf or hard-of-hearing and we
supply 14 hours daily average and we have an option to provide six hours
from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and six hours from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. I don't know
they pick these times but it is like this. And all the regulatory programming
framework applies to all stations in series with more than 500,000
(inaudible). So that's the law here and next year we have more closed
captioning to be provided. It goes in to 20 hours daily.
So the main problem that we are facing today are the problem with
captioning metrics. So we have set it, 15290 which were made before we
had the law to provide closed captioning. So we had little closed captioning
on television and they set some metrics. So I don't think that's a benefit. It
follows reality. So they made it based on U.S. and Canadian standards and
they made little research on accessibility. And they made specifications for
captioning audio description which didn't exist at all on TV and sign
language. And so let's go to slide 7. So some of the metrics, so closed
captioning they set the captioning late, maximum four seconds. It is not an
average of four seconds live and it is frame acclimated. Prerecorded
content. So there are some research that we did that delay is an average of
8 seconds and frame rate it is not the most table metrics in prerecorded
content but they said like this. They set minimum and maximum display
times whether they are one, two or three lines of captioning and again there
is no research telling us there should be one or two or three lines which is
better for understanding. So I think the main metrics should be
understanding. So which way they have to understand better, one, two or
three lines. Captioning for live closed captioning so again we speak one
way. When we try to write down what we speak exactly we speak, verbative
captioning is it better for understanding we are not sure of that. 98% of
accuracy of live closed captioning and we don't have technology to have
98% of captioning not in software voice or stenography. Set ER model and
in United States they have a model foe measuring it but it is not mandatory.
In USA they are -- well, in USA NCRA which court reporter Association they
use parameters for live steno type and they are not mandatory and they
were set on (inaudible) and not on TV. After all it doesn't mention the
research bast it. So it is very hard to view with this quality metrics. And
what we have, what we have here from audience, well, they report in
observance with metrics. So delay is the most critical point. So synchrocity
and perceived quality, we can have a maximum four second delay. We have
the provider for closed captioning and in Sao Paulo and we have signals all
over the country and it is very hard to make it sync everywhere and we read
the research from Mike Armstrong from BBC and he demonstrates the link.
When we have more synchronicity and viewers understand it better, so the
most critical point is delaying. It is more critical than accuracy. And so we
have here a graphic showing how Armstrong did this link. So I am going to
slide 11 and so the clearest trend for timing was for people watching with
sound web. There was a strong (inaudible) increase in quality score. So we
reducing delay improved understanding of that's the point. The point -- all
the points understanding and for the range of time tested each one second
reduction in the delay gave just over five points improvement in the score.
Last one second of the delay more five points in understanding that's the
point and slide 12, so understanding depends on the way you present closed
captioning. Popup or roll on. And there is some linguistics issues, I think
that linguistic conversations is sometimes better for understanding and it
required less reading and it makes spoken language more understandable,
too. And the point is are we using research in the field in Brazil. I think we
are not using it. I think we should change all the metrics. Slide 13, there is
another issue, they are technical and they are for engineers. So (inaudible)
heavy hand and, et cetera, strange from -- because we send signal from one
point to another. Telecommunications problems in digital television,
blocking and so on and slide 14, how to reduce delays. We have to review
the service end to end and some way you can delay image and sound and
then make it match to closed captioning but this is a problem with
emergence alerts and because we can't delay emergence alerts. So there is
this problem. And we have to make more research and improvement and
really speaking software and stenography. Spoken language has some
words that vocabulary doesn't have and we go -- I don't think I am going to
talk too much on slide 15 and slide 16. But just for -- it is an app for sign
language which reads (inaudible) and makes -- has a prize and we have
another use of closed captioning United States like boxish and second screen
but I am going to jump to slide 17. My conclusion, well, second mandatory
metrics doesn't guarantee quality. What guarantees quality? When we have
understanding. People have to understand closed captioning and how do
they understand and we have to focus discussions and quality metrics
derived from language to language and future sectors are involved. We
need technology and methodology and we need to research with deaf people
how they understand it better. And I think understanding is the best
metrics. So thank you. Those are my contacts if you want to make me
questions I am here to answer you.
>> PETER LOOMS: Thank you very much gabby. Thank you for a
very interesting and very frank presentation about the challenges you are
facing with accessible television in Brazil. Towards the end you just go back
a bit, you were talking about quality metrics can vary from language to
language. Do you mean that languages are intrinsically different and
therefore there may be some challenges in languages where politicians are
very verbose and spec very fast and very fast and in lengthy terms making it
difficult to provide live captioning. Could you give some other examples of
what you mean by the variation or are you thinking more about respeaking
and the fact that software for big languages may not be so easy when it
comes to small languages? There may not be solutions for respeaking for
some of the smaller language. Could you explain in a few more words about
that Gabby?
>> GABRIELA CAMPEDELLI: We made a research here and you can
imagine regulatory framework. You are going to notice there is -- there are
different metrics for French and for English. We can make conversation with
French as we can do with English. So they have the metric, they derived
from French to English because you have more words to speak in French
than you have in English. The same happens to Portuguese and same
happens to Finnish and the start of technology speaking software you have
voice -- you have more voice in English than you have in Spanish or
Portuguese or French. So I think the first chance to have a nice technology
for Latin language is trying to create voice data banks for this language and
when we have -- and we have also we have many many accent in English
Spanish and we have many accents in Portuguese. If you see the
respeaking software from Portuguese it is really better to create in Portugal
accent than it is in Portuguese accent. I think these are the main points we
have to pay attention to.
>> PETER LOOMS: Thank you Gabby. I will ask people in the
audience here in Geneva or online if they have any questions. Is nobody on
line with the questions? Nope. Anybody in the room? We have a
gentleman from the United States who gave a presentation yesterday about
digital radio. Please take the floor and just identify yourself.
>> Yes, it is Mike Starling national public radio. Excellent
presentation and the quality is quite good. I have a question on mean
opinion score versus understanding. Understanding is the best metric I
agree completely. Mean opinion scoring as we understand that valuation
metric is typically scored by the individual testers themselves. That is their
satisfaction with the quality which we have often found to be not exactly
coincident with the true understanding. They might enjoy a particular
presentation better but retention of information for best understanding is
sometimes off the mark. Have you found any of that?
>> GABRIELA CAMPEDELLI: Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. You mean
understanding of the information more than the enjoyable of the closed
captions, yes, that's what you mean? Because what -- I am on the phone
and I am not sure I understood your question. So.
>> MIKE STARLING: Yes, you have it correct. Is there a reported
enjoyment always coincident with accurate information transfer?
>> GABRIELA CAMPEDELLI: No. We found that more on audio
description than in closed captioning. But no. They don't -- the
understanding varies from people to people and the way they got that. So if
that one has born that, it has one kind of understanding and it is to -- he
lost the hearing after older. He has another kind of understanding. So it
derives from the way he got that, too. So the previous research we saw
that. But I think the best metric for understanding is how they understand
the information and not how they enjoy the information. Because it is
varies. You have a point and we have to make many many research in that
to see how they understand and how it derives from the way he moves
hearing.
>> MIKE STARLING: Yes. Thank you. I agree. We found that
testing for retention and accurate recall has been our best metric to try and
determine the best mode of presentation. Thank you.
>> GABRIELA CAMPEDELLI: Thank you.
>> PETER LOOMS: Other questions from the floor? John Linder from
Swiss text.
>> John: I don't have a question. It is more a remark. We have
seen now two presentations from two neighboring countries and as far as I
can see the awareness in the two countries is very different. Why is that?
Do you have an idea?
>> PETER LOOMS: Gabby would you like to answer that? Why do
you think there are differences in awareness levels in Argentina and Brazil?
>> GABRIELA CAMPEDELLI: What does he mean of awareness?
Audio? Awareness levels?
>> John: The quote for subtitling in Brazil is much higher than in
Argentina.
>> GABRIELA CAMPEDELLI: Okay. We have politicians, you know,
and we do have politicians in Argentina and maybe she is afraid to provide
that amount. The captioning here in Brazil who have politicians who vote.
We have 5 million but 5 million they have relatives and this is 50 million
people who are sensible to this kind of service. So politicians said that it
was -- and he is very popular with people and he wanted to say okay I am
really good. So they said that. But sometimes it is impossible to have really
(inaudible) in most cities and these stations can provide closed captioning.
So we try to solve this problem by providing most of closed captioning in
national programming. So sometimes local programming doesn't have
closed captioning and I don't know if it is good to have this quota as high as
it is if people don't understand. We have this quota and we try to overcome
this challenge.
>> PETER LOOMS: Thank you. We have some -- is there a question
from someone online?
>> We have Natalia requested the floor.
>> PETER LOOMS: So Natalia in Buenos Aires can we hook her so we
can hear Natalia. Please go ahead.
>> NATALIA LAUBE: Hi. Can you hear me?
>> PETER LOOMS: Yeah, we can hear you loud and clear.
>> NATALIA LAUBE: Okay. No further opinion on the matter, I think
we took the Brazilian digital TV standard and Brazil is more advanced in
general in digital TV, in closed captioning for digital TV and accessibility in
general because in Argentina there is no culture for accessibility and we are
learning everything. So maybe that's a point, too for us. We are learning
and Brazil is like a teacher for us in digital TV. Maybe this is -- this is the
difference.
>> PETER LOOMS: Thank you Natalia. Any other questions from the
floor? We have a speaker, a question from Sweden.
>> MIA AHLGREN: Well, this is Mia Ahlgren from the Swedish
disability federation. I was wondering actually to all panelists remotely or
here in the room also to China how is the CRPD, the Convention of the rights
for people with disabilities, how -- is this something that is used when we
discuss quota and so on in the different countries?
>> PETER LOOMS: Should we start with Natalia? Natalia you
mentioned it specifically in your presentation, was it Article 66 made -- of
the national legislation, made a reference to the Convention. But what role
does the Convention actually play in Argentina do you think?
>> NATALIA LAUBE: Sorry I didn't hear. I didn't hear well the
question. Sorry.
>> PETER LOOMS: I will repeat. What role does the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities play on the accessible
media discussions in Argentina? Do you think it is a positive driving force or
would some of these changes have happened anyway? What role do you
think it is playing in the Argentine discussion about accessible media?
>> NATALIA LAUBE: Okay. I think we ratified the Convention and
Article 66 was in part possible because the Convention exists.
>> PETER LOOMS: Because before the Convention you already had
both national and provincial legislation for television accessibility.
>> NATALIA LAUBE: No. Because ->> PETER LOOMS: I can show did you -- there were at least two
Argentine provinces that had provincial legislation for this but the interesting
thing was it was never actually implemented.
>> NATALIA LAUBE: But the national law is 2009 and the Convention
is 2006. I think the Convention is very important and the law was possible.
The Article 66 was possible because the Convention exists.
>> PETER LOOMS: Yes. Great. So perhaps we could ask Gabriela
what role do you think the Convention has played?
>> GABRIELA CAMPEDELLI: It is still in discussion because it has
some problems that just goes to court. So Convention we have to be
nondiscriminatory including -- we have more closed captioning then we have
audio description. Blind people they should have more because people have
more. I don't say they are wrong. There is some possibility to provide
audio description in live programming in sports. You can say stop because I
am going to describe here. We can provide audio description in live
programming and people go to court around they use the Convention for
them. So we have to -- the Convention works some way and everything
goes to justice. I think the process should be too slow. I think that we
should find another way to provide more audio description on television. Not
on television or more audio description on other means. So we can have
audio descriptions on Internet or we can have audio descriptions a library for
audio descriptions and so on. I think maybe we push it, maybe how I say
radical, if it is radical. I think it is radical. Sometimes it is done -- it is
radical. They use it radically. Yeah. I think you understand.
>> PETER LOOMS: A quick comment from Dongxiao Li about the
Chinese situation and then we will take a question from Axel Leblois.
>> DONGXIAO LI: I think that national Convention influence a lot to
the policymakers of China but for the disabilities personally they might not
know about it. As I mentioned in my (inaudible) in 2008 Chinese
Government put a law and national protect disabilities. This law is under the
national Conventions and I think certainly this UN Conventions will influence
the standard makers to obey some laws to protect these disabilities. Yes.
>> PETER LOOMS: It is creating a greater awareness among decision
making among legislators both at national and regional level. It is adding
imperatives to think about this issue.
>> DONGXIAO LI: It is very important. It is a power to influence
policymakers.
>> PETER LOOMS: Thank you and then we have a question from the
floor from Axel Leblois.
>> AXEL LEBLOIS: Yes, I think we just an observation and piece of
information. When we conduct the CRPD progress report once a year to
measure ICT accessibility in countries, this year we had 72 countries
reporting, we conduct regression and see what the causes. What causes
countries to be more successful than others in successful implementation
and two factors to explain. Countries that have Persons with Disabilities
involved in policy making are far more successful than other and countries
that participate in international organizations typically are ahead of other
countries as well. Those are two factors that influence countries to be
successful. As regards the Convention, there is -- there are two situations
countries that have ratified the Convention and not the optional protocol and
countries that have ratified the Convention and not the optional protocol.
Both have signed and ratified the optional protocol. When the person cannot
get a decision from the justice system and they can go to the committee and
the committee renders a decision of the last May a case was quite
interesting that Hungary had a situation where banks had ATMs that were
not accessible and after several years of procedure every person went to the
Committee and commit tie rendered a decision that to effect Hungary to
correct the problem and has new regulation on banks. So even tally if that
kind of situation tn continues you will see the high commission on Human
Rights will take more and more decisions. So I think you will see that the
CRPD will deeply influence the way that audiovisual is accessible in countries
in the next few years.
>> PETER LOOMS: Many thanks for that clarification. Any further
questions from the floor?
>> We have Gabriela.
>> PETER LOOMS: Please go ahead.
>> GABRIELA CAMPEDELLI: Hi. I have an observation. The
Convention is good to implement accessibility services. I am talking
specifically in communication. But I think sometimes when things goes to
justice too much because maybe disabled people are not understanding the
challenge the provider has to overcome. So they -- I don't know, it depends
a little on the tradition politician tradition of the country. So when things
goes to justice and can't be solved I don't think it is good. I think we have
to find a way to solve things and to make it go faster and not slow because
here in Brazil justice is law and it is law down the process. I don't think it is
good. I think the Convention is good but the justice here is not too good.
That's my point.
>> PETER LOOMS: From my understanding is that we need to
explore other consultation mechanisms and not just assume that if there is a
problem you go to the courts because in some countries this may take many
many years. So clearly you have a recourse to legal action but maybe it is
more efficient to look at other Consensus based mechanisms for regulating
an industry where you get buy in from all the key stakeholders and therefore
you don't end up having to spend a lot of money in a court and waiting for a
long time.
>> AXEL LEBLOIS: We fully agree with that and promote that
particular stance. Ultimately there is a recourse and that will influence
things in our countries.
>> PETER LOOMS: You need incentives to work together.
>> AXEL LEBLOIS: We were in China last week with the ministry of
the ICTs and the disabled persons organizations discussing accessible
banking services and everyone paid a lot of attention to the case in Hungary.
So that's how it is progressively influence legislation around the world. I am
waiting for a case on television. It will come.
>> PETER LOOMS: There is question from Mia Ahlgren.
>> MIA AHLGREN: I would just like to comment on that. I, of
course, we are all wanting solutions that are practical for everyone and
make a change in life but I think that the possibility for individual complaints
is important. Because even if there is the possibility that the people with
disabilities often don't have the resources to make the complaints. This is
the case in my country.
>> PETER LOOMS: I would like to round off this particular session.
What we tried to do was to show that different countries have got very
different approaches but ultimately it is very much about promoting
networking, making sure that people in Argentina, Brazil China other parts of
the world can use each other's experience, use each other's knowledge, use
each other's contacts because in most cases we can help each other to
understand what the challenge is but most of the solutions we need are
already there. It is a question of knowing what they are and how they can
be applied.
And it has been a great privilege for me to work with the three of them to
put together this session. Could we just show our appreciation for Dongxiao
Li for Natalia Laube and for Gabriela Campedelli for taking part in this
particular session.
(Applause.)
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Thank you. Alexandra here speaking.
Just a word to congratulate you all because these kinds of discussions -- I
don't know for sure that they take place in other organizations but I am so
glad that at least has been helping a little bit, 0.2%. In this room we have
regulatory from the Member States and non-profit organizations and we
have organizations representing disabled persons. We have persons from
the university they do research and we need them. We need operating -- I
am so glad, this is a pretty frank exchange, a bit hard but I think we need
that to progress. If we don't face it in a frank way what the issues are we
won't progress. We are going to break for lunch now even though it is a bit
earlier and we are going to -- pardon me? Ahh.
>> Gabriela would like to thank you all.
>> PETER LOOMS: Gabriela please go ahead.
>> GABRIELA CAMPEDELLI: Hi. I want to thank you all for
everything. Bye-bye.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Okay. So we are going to reconvene at 1
o'clock. Thank you. And bon appetite.
(Session concluded at 11:39 CET)
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