Thread Subject: Re: real-time text

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From: Gregg Vanderheiden
Date: Fri, Jun 22 2007 3:45 PM

Hi Jim,

Not sure I understand your points. Some questions for clarification and
some comments.



> 1. Deaf users have adopted line-by-line text conversation and
> SMS with great enthusiasm because the options open to them
> are mobile, easy to use, and accepted by many non-deaf
> people. This last point allows for direct communication
> rather than relay.

a) IM is indeed used by people who are deaf and people who aren't. People
who aren't deaf also have real-time methods (where people can 'hear' what
people are saying as they are saying it) but people who are deaf do not.
Is your point that everyone enjoys IM or that people who are deaf do not
need and would not benefit from having the option of real-time (read as they
write) communication.

b) On your last sentence - you bring in relay. Not sure what you meant
here. All of the proposed methods could be used with our without relay. Did
I miss something?



>
> 2. It is likely that if we require character-by-character
> conversation in 255/508 that vendors will either not provide
> it or support it as well as they do line-by-line, and
> non-deaf users may not adopt it either. This would
> perpetuate the communication ghetto we had with wireline TTY.

Is your assumption that non-deaf users would not adopt it based on any
research? All of our work has shown that many non-deaf people would love
to have the ability to view text as it is written when in two way
conversation in IM. They are frustrated by just seeing "the other person is
typing" but not being able to see anything until it ends.

And I'm not sure I understand the 'ghetto' comment. The new proposals move
us away from TTY and to international standards for text on a call. The
protocols proposed would allow both real-time and (see below) line by line
conversation at the user's option.

(I think implementing an option to allow users to hold their text until
return is a good idea. There are times (and some people) where it is more
desirable to finish a corrected utterance before sending. (In fact there
are times when we should have that feature work for people when they are
talking). )

Thanks

Gregg



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> Jim Tobias
> Inclusive Technologies
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