According to Statista, it was estimated that around 430 million people worldwide suffered from disabling hearing loss in 2019, and is expected to reach 509 million by 2030. With businesses aiming to create diverse and inclusive teams of people with differing talents, abilities, and needs, it’s important that they are providing the proper tools for employees, especially those with disabilities such as hearing loss.
CREATING AN INCLUSIVE WORKPLACE WITH THE ONE PLATFORM
As businesses work toward an inclusive workplace, they have likely realized there are many aspects to doing so. In the communications realm, it’s important to increase communication capabilities for team members who are hard of hearing or have hearing loss.
Employees who are hard of hearing may find it difficult or be unable, to hear announcements or have conversations with other team members via audio communication devices like radios or mobile phones.
ONE™ Communic-Aid uses The ONE Platform, a single source technology, to enhance communication and notification for hard-of-hearing team members.
How ONE Communic-Aid Works
ONE Communic-Aid works with The ONE Platform family of solutions and numerous devices to enhance communications with text notification and vibration alerts over the radio, audio notifications to radio-integrated hearing loops, audio notifications to radio-integrated Bluetooth hearing aids, and even speech-to-text-to-speech communication bridges via smart device.
ONE Communic-Aid does this by seamlessly integrating many visual, sensory, and auditory devices for one-way and two-way communications to ensure that everyone is in the know at all times.
The technology works as an input/output model, as shown below, where businesses can choose which inputs will determine what events employees will be notified of. The outputs are the different ways in which the employees will be notified.
Text-To-Pager
The text-to-pager feature was developed by AWC for healthcare solutions where pagers are still quite prevalent. A message is transmitted from The ONE Platform and arrives instantaneously on local pagers. The pagers can be configured to vibrate and may be partitioned for various groups in the same manner as radio channels.
Text-To-Radio
The text-to-radio feature is like text-to-pager, except that the alphanumeric screen is built into the radio. The radio also has a vibration attachment that notifies the hard-of-hearing employee on message receipt and group partitioning. The AWR-D7500 and Kenwood NX 3300 are both great options to accommodate this.
Text-To-SMS
The text-to-SMS feature allows messages generated from The ONE Platform to be transmitted directly to a mobile device like a cell phone. This feature also allows for two-way communication since SMS messages can be responded to by the recipient and converted to speech over a radio channel.
ONE™ Sage Speech-To-Text-To-Speech Gateway
This configuration allows radio users to communicate over the radio, parses the speech-to-text, and transmits it as SMS to a mobile phone. Additionally, this configuration allows response SMS texts to be broadcast over the radio as text-to-speech.
Recently, a customer inquired about a communication solution for a team member with hearing loss. This team member needed to interact with others on the team but was unable to participate in two-way radio conversations. Using ONE Sage and the SMS input/output features, AWC was able to configure a communication gateway that bridged the various means of communication together.
GET ACCESS TO THE ONE PLATFORM PLAYBOOK
Having access to appropriate communication tools are essential to operating an efficient and inclusive company. At AWC, we are committed to providing innovative communication solutions to meet those needs.
Want to learn more about The ONE Platform’s capabilities? Download the playbook here.
