Development consortium: HCI across borders

Though every country and context is unique, and much of HCI research aims to design for situatedness, there are lessons to be learned across borders, across contexts. Questions we ask include: What are common themes that tie together different contexts? For instance, could a maternal health project in India benefit from lessons learned from a project in Kenya and vice versa? How can we, as a global HCI4D community, work within countries and across them as well? The short-term goal of this event is to link research and practice across disparate HCI4D contexts by creating a forum for conversations where 'HCI4Ders' from across the globe can speak and be heard, as they develop themes of common interests, and work on potential projects or proposals to concretely target an action plan they can pursue as collaborators. Our longterm goal is to advance HCI4D research so that, as a community, we can engage more productively in research conversations that focus on learning and collaborating across borders

Telecommunications bridging between deaf and hearing users in South Africa

This paper presents a description of telecommunications for Deaf people in South Africa by contrasting the situation in the developed world. We explain the main motivations for providing a locally appropriate solution. Research activity began with a community-based field trial of TTYs. The recommendations of the trial motivated an innovative approach to provide synchronous and accessible relay services. Drawing from international technological developments, we designed a software solution called the SoftBridge. We employ iterative Action Research cycles to drive technological modifications to the SoftBridge and to encourage adoption by the end-user community.Telkom, Siemens, Cisco, THRIP, SANPA

Automatic voice relay with open source Kiara

One way for Deaf people to communicate with hearing people over the telephone is to use a voice relay. The service is often provided with a human relay operator that relays text into voice, and vice versa, on behalf of the Deaf and hearing users. In developed countries, voice relay is frequently subsidised by governments or service providers. There is no such service in South Africa. We have built several automatic voice relay systems for a disadvantaged Deaf community in Cape Town. This paper describes how we augmented a general-purpose communication system for voice relay. Kiara is a fully open source Instant Messaging, voice and video over Internet Protocol communication system based on the Session Initiation Protocol. We integrated automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech technologies into Kiara to provide real-time automatic voice relay for relayed communication. As it stands, Kiara can also be used for standard voice and video relay with a human operator.Telkom, Cisco, THRIP, SANPADDepartment of HE and Training approved lis

Kiara: an open source SIP system to support Deaf telephony

This paper describes Kiara, an open source SIPbased communication system that provides the building blocks to enable Deaf relay services. We have implemented a prototype that provides real-time text, voice and video to a variety of end user devices over a variety of networks. The work-in-progress concerns the addition of relay services for the Deaf.Telkom, Cisco, THRIP, SANPA

A mobile Deaf-to-hearing communication aid for medical diagnosis

This paper describes how a deaf to hearing communication aid built for a mobile phone can be used to provide semi-synchronous communication between a Deaf person and a hearing person who cannot sign. Deaf people with access to mobile phones have become accustomed to using Short Messaging Services, to communicate with both hearing and Deaf people. However Most Deaf people have basic literacy levels and hence prefer not to communicate with text, but with South Africa Sign Language. The prototype uses interpreted communication between sign language and English. The mock-up is meant to help a Deaf person convey their medical conditions to a doctor face-to-face in the office. The prototype is made using prerecorded sign language videos for the Deaf person and English text for the hearing doctor. The interaction on the mobile phone is done inside the phone's browser using video streaming, instead of playing the video in a third-party media player. The design goal was to present the system on a mobile phone from the computer-based prototype. This paper takes a look at the background, related systems, the methods, the design and user testing of such a system on a mobile phone; using two prototypes client-server and client only.Telkom, Cisco, THRIP, SANPADDepartment of HE and Training approved lis

An Internet paradigm approach to policy-based network management of legacy kit for VoIP services in Next Generation Networks

With QoS available on IP-dominant NGNs, Policy-based Network Management (PBNM) is an effective mechanism for managing services as opposed to actual devices. IP is ubiquitous, and any NGN must contend with legacy devices that do not support emerging PBNM protocols. This Work in Progress uses the common Internet notion of a proxy to enforce policies on legacy equipment. We use VoIP as a mechanism to test the validity of our intended solution.Telkom, Siemens, THRI

An Interoperable signaling solution for IP-based Next Generation Networks

Current VoIP signaling protocols are interoperable with the PSTN SS7 via H.323-to-SS7 or SIP-to-SS7 gateways. As we move toward the Next Generation Network, the PSTN falls away and we work toward carrier-grade VoIP interoperability between H.323, SIP, and other future VoIP signaling protocols. This paper present a Work in Progress to design and implement a solution based on the Internet Protocol itself.Telkom, Siemens, THRI

Reliable communication across ad hoc networks

This paper presents a fully decentralised peer-topeer voice communication tool intended for use across mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) by distributed groups who desired collaboration. We examined the synergy between MANETs and peer-to-peer virtual overlay networks which allowed the creation of ad hoc applications. One style of communication considered suitable for task oriented distributed group collaboration was push-to-talk. This research was focused on providing a push-to-talk communication platform suitable for deployment across MANETs. The research methodology employed was a proof of concept approach within a classical experimental computer science paradigm. We developed a prototype which used JXTA, a peer-to-peer virtual overlay network, to provide push-to-talk functionality across MANETs. Guaranteed delivery of messages was provided via a peer-to-peer voicemail delivery system. While the system did what intended we show that JXTA had a problem with the efficient delivery of voice samples.Telkom, Cisco, THRI

An interoperable signaling solution between SIP and H.323

The Session Initiation Protocol and H.323 dominate the Voice over IP world. These signaling protocols are responsible for call setup and call tear down by IP telephony solutions. This project analyses and discusses the underlying H.323 and SIP interoperability issues and intends to build a scalable solution for the interoperability of these protocols. The gateway maps the call sequences between the two protocols. A test scenario establishes a barrage of call setup and tear down requests to test the scalability of any H.323/SIP interoperability solution.Telkom Siemens, THRI

Policy-based network management of legacy equipment in Next Generation Networks

Next Generation Networks use policy-based network management and QoS protocols to provide voice services on IP networks. Large numbers of older equipment still push IP packets. We present several solutions that include legacy equipment into a PBNM and QoS system. A static design uses traffic shaping at the legacy edge. A dynamic solution uses a Quasi-PEP implemented over RSVP and COPS. Preliminary test results are presented for the static solution. Collected data shows that the solution decreases packet loss on the legacy side.Telkom, Siemens, THRI