European

The companies of the Telecom Italia group have been the first in Italy to develop integrated solutions and to set up trials in order to allow disabled people to telework from home or from satellite centres. Different modules have been developed in internal, national (MURST – Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca Scientifica) and European (TIDE, ACTS) projects. Most of these solutions are based on the integration of innovative voice technologies for the Italian language with commercial telecommunication applications.

Different application modules can be integrated in order to allow the disabled professionals access to different telecommunication services and terminals. The teleworking platform alleviates common access problems to telecommunication of different disabled users groups, such as motor impaired, visually impaired and hearing impaired. Motor impaired people are allowed voice control of web browsers and other Internet services, of videoconference and co-operative working applications, and of house and call centres phones. Visually impaired people are allowed vocal access to information in the Web, to electronic newspapers, magazines and data bases. Hearing impaired people can use a modified PC videoconference application featuring only visual signalling and a double camera with two fixed views of the face (for lip reading) and half-length (for signing).

Objectives:

The possibility to work from home or a satellite centre can open new opportunities for disabled professionals for remaining or entering in the work market. Indeed the introduction of telework can offer a more flexible organisation of work and reduce the need for moving. Rigid working hours, difficult daily displacement, architectural barriers at the working place often create difficult problems for professionals that are or have become disabled. Teleworking can be a solution more compatible with health and personal assistance needs. Obviously teleworking must be organised in a sensible way in order to avoid social and professional exclusion, as demonstrated by the TWIN project (co-ordinated by CSELT, supported by Telecom Italia and funded by the EC under the ACTS accompanying measures).

CSELT and Telecom Italia have long ago initiated an action aimed at creating a platform that could promote disabled teleworking, alleviating the access problems to common telecommunication services and terminals. We were interested in finding real practical applications due to the Telecom Italia group culture and to the internal labour agreement asking for an active promotion of teleworking.

Most solutions were found by the integration of innovative speech technology with telecommunication applications, due to the deep experience of CSELT in this field and the availability of high quality proprietary speech technology at CSELT (best Italian products for speech synthesis and speech recognition in phone environment).

Achievements:

The most innovative modules that can be integrated in the teleworking platform include:

• A proxy server performing automatic, user configurable, modifications to HTML pages in order to allow voice control of any Internet browsers by motor impaired persons.
• A voice controlled videoconferencing and co-operative working application
• A videoconference application for signing and lip reading, with only visual signalling and special camera settings for the hearing impaired
• A centralised service allowing voice dialling by a low cost commercial phone.
• A voice controlled application for managing telephone lines by disabled operators
• An integrated environment for vocal web and electronic documents access for visually impaired users

The integrated teleworking platform have been tested with real users in real working situations, allowing an iterative refinement of requirements and functions. The use of a user centred design approach allowed to identify most important technical features, the preferred interaction techniques, and the desired cost levels from the final user point of view.