Profoundly good news

CapTel phone

Here's a story that's highly relevant to my thinking this week - innovation of something we all still use every day - the telephone.  Here's one with a modern twist and a very practical application.

Reading an article on Stuff's Technology section I came across this useful accessibility device.  This is the kind of technology I like to see - the synergy of a number of technologies to create a whole new capability.  This one brings new hope to better integrate deaf people into the community.

International symbol for deafness

It's neat that the CapTel software translates the audio streams into text to immediately display to the message to a deaf user.  Many deaf people have some level of hearing but miss specific words, so this facility will help to fill in the gaps.

Good to see the government coming to party to partially fund the hire of the equipment but it's a shame that it's not a bigger available pool.

Phones for the deaf