23 March, 2011
The Senate has today supported a motion co-sponsored by Senator Mitch Fifield calling for funding for new technology to help deaf and hearing impaired students at school.
The Senate voted to support funding for a National Schools Pilot Program of Ai-Live, a technology developed by Ai-Media that allows deaf and hearing impaired students to participate effectively in mainstream classrooms.
“Ai-Live is an innovative technology that delivers the text of classroom conversation almost instantaneously to the laptop or tablet device of a student with a hearing impairment,” Senator Fifield said.
“I am delighted that the Senate recognises the ingenuity and usefulness of this technology.”
“It has been proven to deliver transformational results to students who use it, and can help give deaf students the opportunity to participate fully in their classroom and perform to the best of their ability.”
Ai-Live is powered by a remote “respeaker” who listens to what is being said in class then re-speaks the text (with punctuation) into speech recognition software.
The software then streams the text back to the student’s device within seconds.
“This is the sort of technology that schools could purchase for students under the Coalition’s Education Card Policy, which we took to the 2010 election,” Senator Fifield said.
“Ai-Live has the potential to help students across Australia to experience their classroom in an entirely new way and get the most out of their education.”