Thai Minspeak® System for Long-Distance Facilitating Communications Involving People with Communication Disabilities
Sukationg Phuphatana, Sarinya Chompoobutr, Nattanun Thatphithakkul · 2018
Telecommunication is a term for distance communication which is any communication that is not face to face. Distance communication is important to people with communication disabilities because it provides opportunities for more independence, confidence, engagement in the community, self advocacy, self determination, emergency preparedness, social connections, and employment. Distance communication has many forms such as Telephone Relay Services, Video Relay Services, Free phones, or AAC speech generating devices etc. In Thailand Thai Minspeak® system with 144-location overlay was firstly created and installed on Window 8 Tablet Samsung so as to assist those people to communicate with other people in their daily in the vicinity. However, with the limitation of the tablet, an app was created and installed on a smart phone. The tablet and a smart phone are connected and worked together for calling and receiving functions via the aux cable specially created. The whole system (Thai Minspeak® system on the tablet, the app on the smart phone, and the aux cable) enables people with communication disabilities in Thailand to communicate with each other or with other people not in the vicinity but also over a distance.