Lip-Readable Phones | Technology Trends

By Roland Piquepaille

A European Union project named Synface has permitted to develop prototype phones for moderately hearing impaired people. In this article, CNN says that you need a laptop with a special speech recognition software. When a user receives a call on his phone, he can see an animated head "speaking" the words being said over the telephone, which helps him to better understand the conversation. The project took more than three years for a total cost of about 1.4 million euros. And with about 80 million people in the EU alone suffering from some kind of hearing impairment, this could be potentially a huge market, even if the technology is not currently commercially available. Read more...

Let's start with a couple of pictures to illustrate the concept behind Synface.

	Here is a picture of a woman calling while the receiver reads her lips (Credit: KTH University, Sweden).

	On this one, the receiver of the call confirms that he's able to listen to her phone call and to read her lips on his laptop (Credit: KTH University, Sweden).

And now, here are some details about the current status of the project.

Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) head of product development Neil Thomas told CNN the software enabled the listener to lip-read what was being said, just as they would in face-to-face conversation.

"Most people, particularly those who are hard of hearing, lip-read to communicate. When you're on the telephone this becomes difficult because you can't see the person who is speaking to you."

Prototypes of the software are currently in field trials in the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands. RNID is overseeing trials in the UK, and Thomas said results showed 100 percent support for the concept.

And here are some quick details about the technology works.

There is a delay of 200 milliseconds between the person on the other end of the phone speaking and the receiver hearing the words.

This gives the software time to "listen" and display the face on the screen, though the delay is not noticeable and does not interfere with the flow of conversation, Thomas said.

Similar technology already on the market includes video telephony, which required both telephone users to have the technology, whereas Synface required only the receiver to have the software, Thomas said.

For more information, please check the following resources:

"Lipreadable telephones" at RNID
The Synface project homepage at KTH, a Swedish university which was involved because of its speech recognition expertise
A movie showing how the technology works, also at KTH (Windows Media Player format, 2 minutes and 8 seconds, 14.8 MB) and from where the two images above were extracted
"Bringing down communication barriers for the hard of hearing" from IST Results, a service from the European Commission
The Synface project fact sheet also from IST
"Animated face helps deaf with phone chat," published by New Scientist on August 2, 2004