Thank you, Natalya - I really value your perspective!
Regards
Julie
-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion list for disabled students and their support staff. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Natalya Dell
Sent: 09 January 2019 14:15
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Asking about usage of the app PEDIUS
Hi,
I am deaf and can't reliably use the phone for voice. I was a disability
adviser and am now a DSA needs assessor in HE.
I don't know a single deaf person who uses Pedius for phonecalls. The
issue, as ever, is that it is using automated speech recognition
technology which is just not good enough. You need 97% accuracy or
thereabouts for it not to be dangerously confusing (missing out "nots"
confusing "is/isn't" "can/can't" "does/doesn't". Pedius sounds like it
makes things easy for the callers, but in practice I wouldn't trust it.
Individual deaf people may use apps and bits and pieces from time to
time, but in practice they're just not adequate enough for the kinds of
calls I'd want to make with deaf students in HE.
To put how damning my above paragraph is into context. The current human
text-relay service (NGT) offered by BT where an operator types what the
hearing person says and speaks what the deaf person types is awful. It
has been going downhill for years. Most deaf people hate it, I hate it,
hearing call recipients hate it. This app is not better than NGT... I
simply avoid using the phone as much as possible given that there's
email and SMS and text based IMs. (and I spend a lot of time calling BT
out for poor relaying when I have no choice but to phone but have my
calls messed up by their operators).
A good comparison is the automated captions (which deaf people call
Craptions) on YouTube... Some work quite well, others are a disaster.
The types of thing automated captioning messes up are things like
people's real names, plurals etc. Realtime automated captioning will be
worse. YouTube is at least doing it in non-realtime...
I honestly wouldn't waste the time on Pedius. I'd look at options for
two way SMSing with students and or text based IMs which are suitably
secure etc. Talk to students about what they want and go with that.
Happy to discuss this further or hear of other people's experiences if
they are the same or differ from my own :)
Natalya
On 08/01/2019 16:55, Julie Summers wrote:
> Hello everyone and happy new year!
>
> (apologies for cross-posting)
>
> We've been contacted by an external person promoting the app Pedius (https://www.pedius.org/en/home/ ) which is for deaf people to make phone calls without using a third party intermediary.
>
> I was keen to know if others in the sector have any experience of using this app at all whether in the workplace or not. As far as I can tell from the marketing information we have been provided with it is not commonly used in the University sector but I would like to be clearer on this. I would therefore be grateful if you could contact me on or off-list with any comments you have about this app.
>
> Thanks very much in advance and all the best for Semester 2.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Julie
>
>
> Julie Summers
> Disability Adviser
> Disability Service
> 65 Southpark Avenue
> University of Glasgow
> GLASGOW
> G12 8LE
> Direct line: 0141 330 2270
> Main office: 0141 330 5497/5121/7237
> www.gla.ac.uk/disability
>
> How did we do today? Let us know: www.glasgow.ac.uk/disability/contact/feedback
>
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