July 2012
Gloucestershire Deaf Association and Deaf Studies Trust
Supported by University of Bristol Centre for Deaf Studies
It is very simple
 Take the 2.5 million (or so) users of voice phones
(mobile and fixed line) in the area and connect them
to all the people who have difficulty in hearing
 Introduce all the Deaf and hard of hearing people to a
new form of video telecommunications which allows
them to speak, lip-read, read/write the text and see the
other person during the call
 Remove the cost barriers to use, so that the
development will be truly enabling
 And THEN we have a truly equitable society
The Pilot Project
REACH112 (Responding to all citizens needing help)
a three-year project part funded by the European
Commission under the ICT PSP CIP programme.
22 partners from all over Europe, including user
organisations and major global telecommunications
companies – Vodafone (Spain), Siemens, France
Telecom, Nokia.
Large scale: €8.8m UK component: €2.4m
Now myFriend Network is taking this forward.
www.reach112.eu
In a nutshell
 over 1700 home or personal installations of TC and around 400
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RTT TC installations
supplied equipment or free downloads to PC, laptop, netbook or
Android Smartphone
TC relay service – free to users during the project trial
a new telephone system
installations of TC in contact centres for direct calling
interface to textphones & text relay & 999
no 3G mobile services? - reverts to text communication
feedback by calling 55117788 or by email to
support@myfriendcentral.com
training for relay agents – sign language interpreters, lipspeakers and speech to text operators
Evaluation and business plan
What it looks like
Total
Conversation
Infrastructure
Total Conversation is in
 Emergency services – Gloucester Tri-Service,
Avon & Somerset Police, Avon Fire & Rescue
 Blaenau Gwent Contact Centre
 Bridgend Council – walk in service
 Neath one-stop shop
Soon
 Welsh Ambulance – through ABM Health Trust and
Audiology (Bridgend)
 Welsh Blood Service
website for download –
www.myfriendcentral.com
Sign language
explanation
Feature list for
software
Calendar for
relay
availability
What REACH112 delivered
in the five pilots in Europe in 12 months
 Nearly 7,500 registered end users
 over 970,000 Total Conversation calls
 over 124,000 relay calls were made
 that is, more than 100,000 hearing people were impacted as
well as Deaf and hard of hearing people
 Significant progress was made in access to emergency – in
training, in awareness, in protocols – over 70 real calls
processed
Voices
 I phoned the doctor to make an appointment and
the surgery had to call me back. Before TC I wasn’t
able to make an appointment via the telephone but
was able to call them directly, receive a call-back
and book an appointment for the same afternoon.
With TC the barriers to communication were gone.
 A Deaf man visited a friend at the Hospice who
was dying of cancer. He brought his smart phone
and connected with a friend who lived far away.
His dying friend was very pleased to see her friend
on the video screen and communicated in sign
language. It may be the last time for them to see
each other. This Deaf man was moved to tears.
 When I was at the leisure centre with my children,
I received a video call from a friend. We instantly
communicated using sign language on a face-toface basis. It was amazing as I felt very equal with
hearing people who speaks naturally on their
mobile phones. Other hearing people who were
with me were amazed and really thought it was
innovative.
Case Studies
 Sven got a TC device for home use and one for his
hearing sister and her family. He bought a TC
license for his parents. Sven uses voice with his
family, has sign from his mother & sister but
lipreads his father.
Sven used textphone in the past – OK, but TC gave
the extra dimension facial expressions & sign
language
Cases – not all easy
 Mary has a severe hearing loss and a sight problem. She
also is a slow learner. After trying a videophone, we gave
her a larger screen laptop. Never having had a computer,
she did not understand how the mouse moves a pointer on
screen. She called friends but was upset that they did not
call her back. When introduced to the relay service, she
could not follow what was going on. It became clear that
she was not actually understanding the signing but trying
to lip-read and to speak to the interpreter.
 No breakthrough yet.
Relay Service Models in use
Models are reversible – ie hearing voice caller to
Deaf end-user – the greater impact is the
number of hearing people contacted through
relay – 5 times the number of active Deaf
users
Relay agents can see/manage all incoming calls
24 hour service – defaulting to text relay
(a) when out of reach of 3G and
(b) when no TC agent available
Models also tested for speech/lip-reading and
speech-to-text agents
Simple Sign-Relay Model
myFriend mobile (smartphone) or
myFriend (PC)
Relay Centre:
sign language or text or
speech
To voice phone users
Centre-based
relay agent
Interpreters
Bristol, Cardiff, Gloucester, N Wales
Multiple TC callers
Relay Central
Relay
agents in
different
locations
GP
Make appointments
NHS Direct
Enabling health access in the community
Remote access - VRI
Deaf person and health
professional in same location
Interpreter
hears,
speaks and
signs – or
uses speech
to text
Relay Centre:
sign language
A&E access
Voice, text,
gesture signing
HoH text
or speech
Lip-speech; speech to text
A&E case notes through
interpreter
Relay Centre:
sign language
Cost Savings – Efficiency gains
Costs
 Depends on extent of application – various options
shown in the documents
 Council-wide model – Around £500 per month – on-
demand relay service
 Individual user model - £9 per month for support for
less able adults
 Friends and family use free TCphone version