Urgent mobile tool for hearing impaired, language dysfunction and foreigners at emergency situation

Abstract

This paper introduces a mobile application that allows deaf, language dysfunctioned, or non-native language users to report emergencies. An earlier version (booklet) was designed for hearing impaired person to be able to communicate with others without speaking. The current smart phone application allows calls to be made from a remote location. The screen transitions application follows the dialogue models used by emergency services. Users interact with the dialogues by tapping on icons or pictograms instead of using text messages. Evaluation by deaf people and a non-native speaker found that it was about three times quicker to report an emergency using this tool than it was by using text messages.