Remote simultaneous speech transcription, displayed also on tablets
Free of charge at all 158 T-Mobile and partner shops
Employment of specially trained blind transcribers
The service consists in remote simultaneous speech transcription, allowing deaf and hearing-impaired persons to conveniently view the answers of the shop assistant on the display of a tablet. The service is available free of charge at all of the operator’s 158 shops.
If a customer asks for the T-Mobile e-Přepis service, the shop assistant will lend him a tablet with an on-line transcription application and contact a transcriber. All verbal communication of the shop assistant will be transmitted with minimum delay via the mobile network into the transcriber’s headphones and subsequently displayed as text on the tablet for the customer. For the sake of personal data protection, transcripts are not stored anywhere and are immediately deleted after reading.
“T-Mobile is bringing hearing-impaired customers considerable freedom in communication, as they are no longer dependent on partial help from others and are thus given certainty that they will receive all necessary information and will understand it correctly,” says Martin Novák, President of the Czech Union of the Deaf (CUD).
From a technical and staffing perspective, the service is arranged by the social enterprise Transkript online in cooperation with the CUD. Transkript online thus provides employment to specially trained blind transcribers, who are able to achieve a typing speed of more than 500 keystrokes per minute. These people have the ability to focus intently on speech, thus utilising their disability as a professional advantage.
It is estimated that up to 500,000 deaf and hearing-impaired persons live in the Czech Republic, with only approx. 1.2% of them being able to communicate using sign language – these were mostly born deaf (as it is difficult to learn sign language when a person loses their hearing as a result of an accident or at a later age). Roughly one-fifth of the total number of people suffering from hearing loss do not use any kind of hearing aid. For these persons, real-time written transcription of speech is an ideal means of communication.