Goodmorning to you all, good to see so many of you here today and compliments to TAG and WGHI for organising this event!
As Director of New Technologies at RNID, I would like to share my vision on interactive texting with you and present you with what I think would be a good roadmap to move us forward. But I hope that what I am going to present to you is not just an RNID view on things. Rather I would like to come to a common understanding of what the problems are and where we want to go in terms of future developments. I am seeking global consensus, driven in the very first place by what deaf and hard of hearing people need. I am proud of the fact that I talk to deaf and hard of hearing people as much as possible about what they want, about the problems they face in society and about how we can overcome these. I hope that the vision I am going to put before you today will reflect that.
We have quite a wide and international audience here, so before I properly kick off my presentation, a few words about the organisation that I work for. RNID, the Royal National Institute for Deaf People, was founded in 1911 and is the largest charity representing the interests of the 9 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the UK. We are a membership charity with well over 34.000 members, employ around 1.300 members of staff and spent 46 million pounds during our last financial year. That money was spent on a great variety of activities, from campaigning and lobbying to raising awareness to providing services and carrying out technical, social and medical research. Our mission is to dramatically improve the lives of deaf and hard of hearing people.
So, coming to the core topic of my presentation: text based communications. Let's have a quick look at where we're coming from. I found some nice historic pictures relating to the development of text telephony, including this nice black and white shot of the early days of the Telephone Exchange for Deaf people, out of which Typetalk was born.
Yet, if we compare these early days of text telephony and relay services with where we are today, one can ask if there really has been that much change. We're still fighting every day to keep Typetalk funded, just as much as we had to fight for its existence in the beginning. And when you look at textphones themselves, they have not really evolved that much over the last couple of decades, certainly not if you compare it to the evolution of mainstream information and communication technology.
However, one interesting observation you can make when looking back is that while deaf people have been using text to communicate for quite a long time now, the rest of society has followed suit recently and to be using text in its various forms in order to communicate is now something that most people do every day. Email, sms, instant messaging, chat rooms and so on, they are all widely popular and most of us can't even remember how we coped without them.
One of the objectives of the day is to look ahead at what the future will bring, and more to the point: what we would expect to see over the next couple of years.
To do that, we must first of all try to clearly define what we are talking about, outline the scope of this exercise if you like. So, what is text communication and what does it mean from the perspective of deaf and hard of hearing people? Well, of course for many of them text communication will be intrinsically linked to traditional text telephony on the analogue telephone network, commonly referred to as the PSTN. Of course, such textphones are in fact implementations of what you could define as a specific mode of communication. One that is text-based, where information in the form of character-bycharacter text flows in real-time between the users and that sometimes also offers extra functionality, like voice-carry-over, auto-answer functions and so on. In that way, it is very similar to what voice conversation offers to hearing people, but using text as the medium rather than voice. That is why we refer to it as the equivalent of what voice offers to hearing people, but for deaf and hard of hearing users.
Since using text as an equivalent to voice does not have to be solely related to analogue telephony, maybe we should try to find a better name for it, something that most people will understand immediately and that reflect its character. Should we therefore call it "Interactive Texting"? Remember, there are many other networks alongside the analogue, fixed landline telephony one. And of course, we would want to see a properly integrated solution too, not just different solutions for different networks. After all, when hearing people make voice calls, they can do that across network boundaries too, and without having to worry about different types of networks and different brands and models of terminals.
Looking at the broader picture, where does interactive texting fit into the plethora of communication systems that are available to us today? It is probably useful to create some kind of classification, so that we can see how different modes of communication relate to each other and what functionality they can offer us. The overall criterion that I use is the distinction between conversational and non-conversational modes of communication. Conversation means that there is an almost real-time interaction between people, where non-conversational modes are more of an off-line way to communicate. Conversational modes include things like direct human-to-human communication, and that could be a spoken dialogue, but of course it could just as easily be between two BSL users. Video conferencing and voice telephony, and indeed text telephony or interactive texting in general would fall into this category too. On the other side of the spectrum, in the non-conversational category, you would find things like sms and email, or newsgroups and message boards on the web for instance. They are basically store-and-forward systems that can be dealt with in a non-interactive way.
Looking at it from this perspective of conversationality, it should become quite clear that you cannot replace a conversational mode with a non-conversational one. No hearing person would get it into their minds to propose to get rid of telephones because of the existence of email or sms. Yet, some people have actually suggested that interactive texting on for instance mobile phones wasn't a requirement since deaf people could use sms to communicate. It should be clear by now that this is a completely invalid assumption. Just like sms does not replace voice telephony or other text systems like instant messaging or email for hearing people, but rather is an additional form of communication, it cannot replace interactive texting for deaf and hard of hearing people.
A bit trickier is the question whether or not instant messaging can serve as a replacement for interactive texting. But instant messaging is not truly real-time, in that it is message based, rather than character-by-character and that means that it is not really a full equivalent of what voice is to hearing people. This problem becomes very obvious when you want, for instance, to use a relay service to allow text users to communicate with hearing people. In that scenario instant messaging becomes pretty useless and makes the conversation break down fast.
The conclusion we must draw from this is that there is a clear need to have a proper character-by-character based text communication mode. And such a service should not be bound to one network, but should cross network boundaries. That in turn means that the technology used in these various networks and services must properly support this way of communicating.
In the light of this need for interactive texting, the question then arises whether or not what we have today in the form of textphones, can be seen as the best possible solution in the best possible of all worlds? While textphones have of course contributed to opening up communications for deaf and hard of hearing people, there are still many problems with them.
Saying that textphones today are mainly used by deaf, hard of hearing, speech-impaired and deafblind people would be kicking in an open door. But it is important to note that text telephony in its traditional form is not a mainstream product. And because it doesn't reside in the mainstream market, it hasn't benefited from competition and mainstream developments. As a result, the user experience in text telephony is nowhere near what mainstream telephony users enjoy. Textphones are not widely available, in many parts of the world they are even completely absent in public places. Because of the existence of a plethora of textphone protocols, users face all kind of difficulties in trying to call other textphone users. Can you imagine that hearing people would only be able to call other users if they were on the same local network and were using similar phones? Yet, this is exactly what textphone users have to put up with. Network support for setting up textphone calls is extremely limited, not to mention facilities to allow different textphones to work together. In the UK at least we have the TextDirect platform that allows non-compatible textphones to talk to each other, but it is not yet available across different networks, let alone in other parts of the world. As devices textphones are not nearly as user-friendly and modern as other phone terminals and textphone users certainly have not the same kind of choice in equipment and services that voice users have. While hearing people can walk into any phone shop in the high street and buy whatever equipment they like, deaf and hard of hearing people do not have that freedom of choice.
And this is not just a matter of choice and convenience: all the limitations of text telephony mean that those people who rely on them for their communication are seriously disadvantaged in their life. It is clear that something must be done.
What makes things even more pressing, is that we have now evolved into what is commonly referred to as an Information Society. One of the most important characteristics of such a civilisation is that access to information and communication has become a very basic need for everyone who wants to participate fully as a citizen, whether it is in employment, education, health, social life or entertainment, information and communication plays a critical role. When people are not able to use the services and products that provide us access to information and communication, that severely disadvantages them, it creates new barriers to opportunity and fulfilment for them. And deaf and hard of hearing people are amongst the most prevalent groups of people that are confronted with new barriers: I already discussed the limitations of text telephony compared to voice telephony, but there are even more issues: the lack of mobile solutions to communicate while on the move is one of them. And for the record: to carry around a textphone and connect it to a mobile phone is in no way equivalent to the truly mobile communications ability that hearing people can enjoy. Also, mobile devices cause interference with hearing aids, a problem that still needs to be addressed properly in Europe. Communication services and products are often lacking in other respects too: they frequently lack features that would benefit hard of hearing people like sufficiently adjustable volume controls, induction loops with standardised connectors, high-quality microphones and speakers, etc.
The net result is that deaf and hard of hearing people are still seriously hampered in their ability to have access to and use information and communication facilities. And that in turn means they cannot always fully participate in, nor contribute to our society.
And the message gets worse: things are not exactly improving either. There is this assumption amongst many people that as technology advances, things by default get better. Unfortunately, it is not always as simple as that. We certainly have seen great developments over the last decade, and the revolutionary expansion of mobile networks and Internet usage has dramatically changed how we go about our daily business. The big problem is however that while this revolution took place, there was not always sufficient attention paid to the needs of all users, including those that rely on interactive texting. The GSM example is a good one. GSM refers to the digital mobile networks that we all use today. GSM has certainly revolutionised the world for most of us: the ability to communicate while on the move is no longer a luxury facility for the happy few, it has become an intrinsic part of our life for most hearing people. Yet, precisely because the specific needs of deaf and hard of hearing people were not taken into account when the GSM standards and technology were developed, we have ended up with mobile technology that serves deaf and hard of hearing people extremely poorly. There is no standard built-in provision for interactive texting on mobile networks and as we have already discussed earlier, sms cannot fulfil that role any better for deaf people than it could replace voice for hearing people. We must learn from that experience, because if we don't we face the risk that the same kind of problem will occur again in the future with newer technologies.
And of course, since we are gradually moving to more converged networks, as opposed to the quite different types of networks and services that we have today, this need to get it right from the start becomes even more pressing.
Based on what I have explained so far, it should be clear that there are two overall, high-level causes for the problems we have today: the first one is the lack of understanding by the different players of the needs and requirements of deaf and hard of hearing people. Without understanding them, we will not get the right solutions. When you hear people say: "oh, well, there is surely no problem, deaf people already have sms and instant messaging", that is a nice illustration of the importance of making them aware of what the issues are and how to overcome them.
And secondly, because text telephony has not been a mainstream provision, it has not been able to take advantage of free market mechanisms, competition and the overall focus on user-friendliness that has benefited the mainstream consumer.
Based on this analysis, the solution surely is also two-fold. On one hand, there is the unmistakable need to raise awareness and inform all stakeholders in a unified, clear, unambiguous way. Too often in the past, different groups have sent out different or partial messages. We must make sure that in the future we speak with one, united voice. As a Belgian, I could quote the national motto of my country of origin: "l'union fait la force". United we stand. Manufacturers, network operators, legislators, regulators, and so on, all of them need to be made better aware of what the problems are and how to overcome them.
Secondly, if we ever want to be able to break down the barriers for deaf and hard of hearing people in a fundamental way, we will need to make sure they can be moved into the mainstream. Only then will they really be able to take advantage of those market mechanisms and the competition that play in that mainstream market. Only then will they have the same freedom of choice and enjoy the same levels of service and support that hearing people already have the benefit of today.
And there is a great opportunity to move deaf and hard of hearing people into the mainstream. As I argued earlier today, text based communications have become popular with all people. Sms, email, chat rooms and instant messaging all are increasingly popular.
The main challenge will be to ensure that the underlying technology that delivers all of these services will fully support interactive texting, which clearly is not yet the case today. Precisely because there is a large lack of understanding of what this means and of how text can be used as an equivalent to voice, technology developments have not always taken this on board. The necessity to raise awareness about what is needed becomes once again apparent.
What would the future therefore look like? We want to transform interactive texting from a niche phenomenon for a "special" group of people into a mainstream provision. That will require the underlying technology to support that requirement. And we do not have to reinvent the wheel to achieve that: there are already solutions available: the ITU T.140 standard provides the mechanism for character-by-character text services, and it has an Internet based edition too, described in the IETF standard RFC2793. We should call for and support the inclusion of T140 and RFC2793 in all developing technology platforms.
They are open standards, developed within the technology community, well tested and proven. We do not want proprietary solutions, and certainly not a repeat of the text telephony debacle that resulted in a plethora of non-compatible protocols. We must have fully interoperable, on open standards based solutions across all networks and all service providers.
We must also make sure we do not exclude existing users on legacy equipment from communicating with these newer systems, and that can be solved elegantly through the provision of gateways between older and newer solutions. That kind of solution will not perpetuate existing, unsatisfactory solutions, but it is still technically and economically viable and reasonable.
And we must see to it that the whole range of functionality is covered, including things like simultaneous voice and text, and useful features like auto-answer, saving of conversations and so on. This might not happen overnight, it will indeed be a step-bystep process, but we should not get distracted from the ultimate goal.
If there is any one thing that I want you all to take with you today, then it is this slide. If we would all put this forward as our vision and at the same time as our demands for how technology should evolve, we will dramatically change the world and we will make society a far more inclusive place for deaf, hard of hearing and speech-impaired people alike.
Is this a bold vision? Perhaps it is. But above all, it is a vision that is rooted in both the needs of deaf and hard people as well as in a realistic understanding of what technology can offer.
This can happen. The future is by definition a blank sheet. We all are the people that will write on that sheet. And we can write on it what we want. Therefore, we need a strong and clear vision. We need a united voice. Together we can make it happen! Let's all work on that. The result will be a noticeably better world for deaf and hard of hearing people. That must be enough motivation for us all!
Thank you for your attention.
Speech by Guido Gybels, given at the Institute of Physics, 76 Portland Place, London, UK, on 8 October 2003.
Slides for: The future of interactive texting (Microsoft Powerpoint 2000 Show 3.89MB)