Tuesday, February 21 2012
Ai-Media launches new Ai-Live™ 3.2 internet captioning service for education and work.
Disability services innovator Ai-Media has launched a new version of its breakthrough “Ai-Live™” internet captioning service to better assist people with a disability in education and the workplace.
Ai-Live™, which was introduced in 2010, uses internet technology to caption lessons and conversations in classrooms and meetings. It sends the captions with only a few seconds’ delay direct to individual users’ laptops and tablets in the originating classroom or meeting room.
The new Ai-Live™ 3.2 has added improved on-screen graphics; Web Content Accessibility Guideline 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) features, colours that are optimised for colour blindness, and new displays designed for iPads and tablets.
Ai-Media’s CEO Tony Abrahams said: “Ai-Live™ 3.2 is our response to users’ feedback from our pilots in schools, universities, workplaces and conferences, and it makes the service easier to use and even more accessible.”
At the recent launch of Ai-Live™ 3.2 in Sydney, Rania Saab, a hearing impaired family law solicitor said Ai-Live™ had transformed her working life. She started using Ai-Live™ in 2011.
Ms Saab said: “I predominantly use Ai-Live™ for mediation. If we are face-to-face, I can lip-read and generally follow the conversation, but sometimes people have telephone mediation and that is where I use Ai-Live™. I also use it for meetings, particularly large meetings and more recently, I have been using it at court as well. A service like Ai-Live™ can assist access to justice for many people.”
Mr Abrahams said: “With services like Ai-Live™, the tools are available now to allow many people with disabilities such as hearing impairment access to the services they need to participate in the workplace. The key challenge is to develop sustainable, innovative funding models for services that help workers with a disability become more productive. The return to the community and overall economic benefit would be many times the initial outlay for the workplace support."
Mr Abrahams continued “This is the logic behind the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) proposal, which will transform the way funding operates in Australia, and enable people with disabilities access to individually tailored solutions with an approved service provider of their choice.
We have 800,000 Australians on disability support pensions at the moment, many out of work because they don't have the access to services they need to participate. That costs the community on many fronts: the cost of disability support pensions, lost taxes, forgone revenue, and the lost opportunity of increased workforce participation. We believe that as a community we need to take a stand to say, we need to prioritise the NDIS and not wait for a budget surplus.”
Mr Abrahams said the release this week of the Gonski Report on Australia’s funding for schools highlighted the need for more funding for students with a disability. “The better educated you are, the more productive you will be in the wider economy,” Mr Abrahams said, “Services such as Ai-Live™ can play a significant role in lifting education outcomes.”
