37th Annual CSUN Assistive Technology Conference Has Concluded

Improving Telecommunication Access Through Research

Date & Time

Friday, March 18, 2022 - 3:20 PM PST

Location

Platinum 2-3

Description

Accessible Communications for Everyone (ACE) is a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) initiative seeking to break down barriers to communications services through collaborative efforts with stakeholders. ACE’s primary purpose is to ensure that people who rely on the Telecommunications Relay Services (TRS) have access to functionally equivalent communications services that facilitate their ability to reach family, friends, businesses, and government services. The FCC with the support of the MITRE Corporation (MITRE) engages people who are d/Deaf, Hard of Hearing, DeafBlind, and speech-disabled in these efforts to strengthen telecommunication accessibility needs and conduct research on mitigations to existing barriers. In this presentation, the FCC and MITRE will describe research efforts, share progress to date, and solicit audience input for future research. MITRE, a not-for-profit company that operates multiple federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs), supports the FCC through development, testing and research. MITRE partners with academic institutions, including the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT-NTID) and Gallaudet University (GU), as well as consumer advocate organizations, such as Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA), to support research and development streams. MITRE develops open-source technology solutions for the d/Deaf or Hard of Hearing that drive telecommunications improvement and disrupt the industry. MITRE will discuss results of the usability and human-centered design research focused on user experiences to determine what is feasible for effective telecommunications. This research empowers the FCC to make data-driven decisions, assessing factors that contribute to determining when amplification makes sense versus when captioning is necessary, determining minimally acceptable accuracy and latency metrics, and exploring new research areas including user cognitive task loads and impacts, and persona usability research. IP CTS quality metrics testing coupled with the usability research have enabled MITRE to analyze and assess IP CTS provider service quality and justify new market entrants that make use of cost-effective, state of the art technologies such as ASR engines to provide captioning for users who are Hard of Hearing.

Audience

Information & Communications Technology
Disability Specific
Government
Research & Development
Legal

Audience Level

Intermediate

Session Summary (Abstract)

Join an interactive discussion of MITRE’s research and development efforts supporting the Federal Communications Commission’s initiative to improve telecommunication accessibility for people who are d/Deaf or Hard of Hearing. Explore free, open-source solutions to test and improve ASR and caption quality and accuracy, and further development of DVC solutions.

Session Type

General Track

Topics