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Trace Center Demonstrates Remote Translation on the Gridreleased December 13, 2000
Contact DALLAS — The Trace Research and Development Center demonstrated remote translation services for persons who are deaf at SC2000 in Dallas. The demonstration is one part of a concept called Modality Translation on the Grid, which could provide a variety of remote services to benefit people with and without disabilities. The "Modality Translation on the Grid" concept also includes:
The captions on demand display at SC2000 demonstrated how people who are deaf and hard-of-hearing could typically follow and participate in a discussion through remote translation services. The demonstration involved a discussion among 20 participants from the conference and at different locations in the U.S., including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Boston University, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center. The locations were connected through Internet2 to the Access Grid, a collaborative virtual environment developed by the National Computational Science Alliance and Alliance partner Argonne National Laboratory. The audio signal from the conference was captured and sent over the Internet to the Trace Center in Madison, Wis. There, a dedicated speaker re-voiced the comments from participants into a voice-recognition system. The text from the voice-recognition system was then sent back to all the discussion group locations where it was projected on a large screen for viewing. This process is similar to Fastran developed by Ultratec in Madison, Wis. The Modality Translation on the Grid concept could fulfill services automatically, with human assistance, or a combination of both. An integrated "try harder" feature could allow gradual migration from human-assistance to fully-automated services where advanced technology is already available. Modality translation services could benefit people with permanent functional limitations such as hearing loss, or visual and cognitive impairments. It could also help those with temporary limitations, like a driver who wants to access the Web, a person who cannot hear because of a noisy environment, or people using small (and wireless) Internet devices with restricted input and output capabilities (e.g. cell phones or personal data assistants). The Trace Center is part of the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Trace is involved in the EOT-PACI partnerships and currently is investigating options and promoting solutions for modality translation services within the Grid.
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