Tactile and Visual Alerts for Deaf People by Mobile Phones

Hamed Ketabdar and Tim Polzehl

Eleventh International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility - Posters and Demos (ASSETS 2009)
Pittsburgh, PA, USA, October 26-28, 2009

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Summary

In this demo, we present an application for mobile phones which can analyse audio context and issue tactile or visual alerts if an audio event happens. This application can be useful especially for deaf or hard of hearing people to be alerted of audio events happening around them. The audio context analysis algorithm captures data using mobile phone’s microphone and checks for changes in audio activities around the user. If such a change happens and also some other circumstances are met, the application issues visual or vibro-tactile alerts (by vibrating mobile phone) proportional to the change in audio context. This informs the user about an event. The functionality of this algorithm can be further enhanced by analysis of user movements.

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