Telecommunity-technology and services to integrate deaf people at work

With the ongoing effects of organisations, such as RNID, to campaign for an end to discrimination against deaf people in society, it is necessary to consider how certain key technologies, such as video telephony, can help in this process. Telecommunity, as part of the RACE program, is developing novel video telephony technology and services to provide support to disabled people both at home and at work. The UK ACE (Advanced Communications Experiment) is concerned with providing services to deaf people. These services, mediated through video telephony (VT), are designed to meet the needs of people whose degree of deafness is such that they are unable to gain adequate benefit from the ordinary telephone system-even with the maximum amount of receive end amplification. Furthermore, it is strongly believed that these services will also appeal to a much wider range of potential users, whose level of functioning with the ordinary telephone can be considered only marginal