IntegraTV-4ALL: an interactive television for all

IntegraTV-4all is an effort towards a new television for all and to promote the access of people with disabilities to the new technologies, with a development adapted and oriented to their possibilities and necessities, which includes both graphical and natural-language interfaces. The consortium is formed by industrial and academic partners(TMT Factory, Ramón Llull University, Technical University of Madrid and Carlos III University). IntegraTV-4all wants to extend interactive television in new directions through the development and integration into the IntegraTV of a new module that contributes to facilitate the personal autonomy and the social integration of groups such as, primarily, people with some sensorial impairment (blindness, visual deficiencies, deafness, impaired hearing ability, limitations of speech). Potentially, nevertheless, the results of the project are also useful for people with some physical or psychic impairment as well as for the elderly. Initially in the project, a basic service of interactive television was implemented, which lets users navigate through the menus using their voice. This service is in operation as a prototype so that users are able to take advantage of all the services of IntegraTV-4all and to navigate through the system without the need of visual references, given that all the options on the screen and all the texts are presented by voice. In a later phase, adapted content (created for users with disabilities) and conversational capabilities (within a limited domain) are added to the system.