[PDFlist] WFD and IFHOH Joint Statement: Automatic Speech Recognition in Telephone Relay Services and in Captioning Services

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WFD and IFHOH Joint Statement:
Automatic Speech Recognition in Telephone Relay Services and in Captioning Services




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The World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) and the International Federation of Hard of Hearing (IFHOH) have made a joint Statement on the use of Automatic Speech Recognition (ARS) with telecommunication relay services (TRS) and also captioning services. Artificial Intelligence (AI) software options are becoming more common these days where it is used as a 'speech to text' tool in the home (e.g.; Alexa and Google home), at work and also for searching information (e.g.; Siri with iPhones). ASR shows promise in having a positive impact on communication and accessibility for deaf and hard of hearing people; however there are strong concerns about ASR being used without human support in the provision of TRS and caption services.

TRS and Captions, allows deaf and hard of hearing people, who cannot understand voices on the telephone, to access telephone services, which is part of the important social infrastructure supporting people’s daily life. TRS is important for enhancing employment potential and social integration of deaf and hard of hearing people. The same applies to access to information via captioning.

Although WFD and IFHOH welcome and encourage research and development on ASR to support deaf and hard of hearing persons, we believe that at the current stage, ASR technologies are not yet ready for replacing human operators and more research and development needs to be done before it becomes truly useable. It is advised therefore that a TRS and captioning by human should be given a priority.

WFD and IFHOH advice Governments of countries where telephone relay services is being considered, that they should not introduce ASR without human relay operator support at this time. Although ASR in the future may improve to the point that it can replace human relay operators and captioners, this would perhaps take many years and would require verifiable evidence that ASR accuracy and service quality attains high success rate as well as significant user community support.

Click this link<https://wfdeaf.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f697c2ac108b0836a287eda63&id=8ade2065ab&e=1e3f219f95> to read more in both International Sign and Joint Statement.








About the World Federation of the Deaf
The World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) is an international non-governmental organisation representing and promoting approximately 70 million deaf people's human rights worldwide.  The WFD is a federation of deaf organisations from 122 nations; its mission is to promote the human rights of deaf people and full, quality and equal access to all spheres of life, including self-determination, sign language.






About the International Federation of the Deaf
IFHOH is an international, non-governmental organization, registered in Germany with over 40 national member organizations from most regions of the world. IFHOH and the European Federation of Hard of Hearing People (EFHOH) work to promote greater understanding of hearing loss issues and to improve access for hard of hearing people.








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