Deaftel ti e
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Deaftel is a phone service that allows deaf, hard of hearing, and speech impaired individuals to communicate with anyone over the phone through text. It works by having a Deaftel user type messages on their smartphone which are then read aloud by a robot to the hearing caller, and the hearing caller's voice is transcribed to text for the Deaftel user. The service was originally created as an entry for a programming contest and gained over 500 users on the first day without any advertising due to requests from the deaf community for such a service.
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Deaftel ti e
- 2. 2 Current Problem • Imagine calling a loved one, Doctor, Lawyer • Can’t speak directly • Complex Procedure (special code words) • No privacy • 16% of the worlds population currently suffer from profound hearing loss that hinders their communication. – Phonak.com
- 3. 3 Current Calling Procedure Step 2 Step 3 Step 5 Step 6 Step 1 Caller provides the The Relay Operator Step 4 The Relay Operator When the parties Caller dials 7-1-1. A relay operator with Both the caller and are ready to end dials that will type everything Relay Operator will the number along the called parties the call, the caller number, announce they hear back to answer the call by with other should use "GA" or or call recipient s to the called the TTY user, and saying "New York information such as "Go Ahead" when uses "SK" or party that they are voice everything Relay," and his/her their name, the they are finished "Signing Off" to receiving a relay the TTY user types Operator ID #. person they are typing/talking. close the call. to the called party. calling, etc. conversation. (Source: www.nyrelay.com)
- 4. 4 About Deaftel Deaftel is a phone service that lets the Deaf, Hard of Hearing & those with speech impediments talk to anyone over the phone. Voice Text Any Hearing User Deaftel Smartphone Deaftel Robot User
- 5. 5 History of Deaftel Contest Entry Began as a contest entry for “I am profoundly hearing impaired. I do not the “Anything Goes” Twilio Programming Contest. sign. …Many places like doctor's offices will not use a relay/tty service to call me about appointment changes. They just wait till I drive Emails 2 hours then tell me there that my While working on my previous startup appointment was changed…I am desperate!” Socialroots.com, I just kept receiving emails from the deaf community asking to use this service. -R Deaftel Signup By the end of the first day I had a little over 500 users signup showing their interest. There was no advertising other than creating a Facebook and Twitter page.
- 7. 8 ContactUs Management@Deaftel.com Twitter @kunal732 & @deaftel Facebook facebook.com/deaftel
Editor's Notes
- Hey guys my name is kunal batra and I am the founder of Deaftel, a new type of phone service for the deaf. Now I am going to go out on a limb here and say that either all of you or almost all of you will not be users of my product. So before I go on any further I just want you to imagine this scenario. Your calling your husband/wife/a loved one, a doctor or a lawyer. However instead of speaking with them directly, your talking to somebody at a call center( could be male or female). Whatever you say, they relay to the person your calling. And then the same applies in the other direction. Whatever your loved one says gets spoken to the person in the call center than this relay operator speaks the message back to you. This happens until the conversation is over. However the conversation is only over until you speak a certain special word that the relay operator recognizes and then will disconnect the call. There is no true sense of privacy. However privacy is not the only issue.
- There is also a complexity with the system. If you wanted to call a deaf individual you can’t dial his or her number directly. You have to call the relay operator. So if you live in the state of new york you dial 711 which connects you with the relay operator service. Then you provide the relay operator with certain pieces of information such as the number of the deaf person you want to call, their name and your name. Also every time someone is done talking they have to either say “Go Ahead” or the deaf person has to type it if using text relay. And finally when the conversation is over either the deaf or hearing person has to say or type the words Signing Off.
- So with Deaftel, I want to transform the current method of making phone calls to be as close as possible to how you or do it on a daily basis. A hearing user can directly dial the deaf users phone number. Deaftel converts the voice of the hearing user into text and sends that to the deaftel users smart phone. The text response of the Deaftel user is then converted into voice(male or female based on the gender of the deaftel user) and then played for the hearing user. No special codewords needed. The Deaftel user will be able just purchase a phone plan based on how many minutes he or she expects to use from our website just like a hearing person does from att, verizon or sprint and will be billed on a monthly basis. I use the image of the robot shown in the slide to emphasize the fact that there is no person sitting inbetween your phone call which makes for a more private conversation.
- So before I go into the demo I just quickly want to go over why I created Deaftel since its always the first question I get asked. I am not deaf nor do I know anybody who is deaf. So while working on my previous Start Up Social Roots. I decided to enter Twilio’s holiday anything goes contest in december of last year. I created the first prototype of deaftel and called it hipfone. It was just javascript/php based. I didn’t win but became a runner up, so twilio wrote a short blurb on their blog. That somehow got picked up on a few other blogs. So starting from January of 2011 I started receiving these compelling emails from people in the deaf community asking me when they could use my service. I pasted one of the emails that really touched me on the slide. So around November and some hundred emails later I decided to work on this full time and see if there was a demand. So I created a landing page describing what the service does and a twitter account and started following the max number of people twitter would allow me which was 2000. I used it as as kind of a cheap way of advertising. Within the first 2 hours out of the 2000 people I followed 500 visited the website and left their email stating they were interested or other relay operators asking how my product worked and asking to meet up and discuss my solution in person.