Abstract
Hearing loss is an invisible but significant barrier in daily life, including telephone conversations. Internet Protocol Caption Telephone Services (IP CTS) is a telecommunications relay service for an individual who can speak, but who has difficulty hearing over the telephone. An individual can use a telephone and an IP-enabled device to listen to the other party and simultaneously read transcriptions of the other party’s words. This article presents the results from a usability assessment of IP CTS devices and alternative speech recognition technologies to provide qualitative and quantitative measures for device and caption performance. The results demonstrate that there is at least one automatic Speech-To-Text (STT) engine that is equivalent or better than three of the four currently available IP CTS devices at producing an accurate, expedient, and usable service.
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