September 17, 2002
ECC Co., Ltd.
NTT Advanced Technology Corporation
ECC Co., Ltd.
NTT Advanced Technology Corporation
ECC and NTT-AT initiate a joint program to introduce the first English lesson system for hearing-impaired persons in the English education industry.
ECC Co, Ltd. (hereafter referred to as ECC, headquartered in Naniwa-ku, Osaka-shi, Osaka; President: Katsumi Yamaguchi) and NTT Advanced Technology Corporation (hereafter referred to as NTT-AT, headquartered in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan; President: Kimio Tazaki) have decided to work together to develop a system to provide English lessons for hearing impaired persons, an objective hitherto considered difficult to implement, by combining the latest technologies from the two companies.
The two companies aim to develop the industry's first English lesson system for hearing-impaired persons, by combining the Web Lesson system, developed by ECC, with On-Sen-Kyo, developed by NTT-AT from R&D results from NTT Cyber Space Laboratories.
Building on its long nurtured know-how on education in conversational English, ECC has employed the most advanced broadband technology to provide a nationwide service of English lessons at home.
Web Lesson runs on a PC with a video camera, and provides not only an interactive communication of smoothly flowing video and high-quality voice but also various features to support conversational English lessons, such as the exchange of Q&A between the instructor and students (chat function), display of educational materials (text transmission function), writing of supplementary information (whiteboard function), practice between pairs of students (pair practice function), and provision of hand-clapping, chimes and other sound effects.
The development of NTT-AT's On-sen-kyo has been based on osseous (through the bone) sound conduction technology developed for application to NTT's Live-phone. The On-sen-kyo is a headphone system using dermal (skin-based) conduction technology. It can provide vibration effects to enable the user to experience and enjoy the rhythm of music. It also has many convenient features, such as enabling the user to control tone (registering of an easy-to-hear tone) by simply turning a knob, emphasizing weak sounds (automatic amplification of hard-to-recognize weak sounds to an appropriate level), and supporting a hearing aid (a built-in induction coil to work with a hearing aid).
Combined with a specially designed FM transmitter, the On-sen-kyo has been successfully used in movie-viewing and other events organized for hearing-impaired persons, as a support tool for hearing sound in high-quality.
With a view to developing an effective conversational English lesson system for hearing-impaired persons, the two companies will start a trial of the newly developed Conversational English Web Lesson with hearing-impaired persons in Tokyo at the end of September 2002. A study group will be set up with these users so that their opinions are taken into account in the refinement of the system.
Both ECC and NTT-AT are taking this opportunity to renew their commitment to developing user-friendly communications tools and educational systems, and to providing services using these tools, as part of their long-term efforts to help develop a barrier-free society.
Building on its long nurtured know-how on education in conversational English, ECC has employed the most advanced broadband technology to provide a nationwide service of English lessons at home.
Web Lesson runs on a PC with a video camera, and provides not only an interactive communication of smoothly flowing video and high-quality voice but also various features to support conversational English lessons, such as the exchange of Q&A between the instructor and students (chat function), display of educational materials (text transmission function), writing of supplementary information (whiteboard function), practice between pairs of students (pair practice function), and provision of hand-clapping, chimes and other sound effects.
The development of NTT-AT's On-sen-kyo has been based on osseous (through the bone) sound conduction technology developed for application to NTT's Live-phone. The On-sen-kyo is a headphone system using dermal (skin-based) conduction technology. It can provide vibration effects to enable the user to experience and enjoy the rhythm of music. It also has many convenient features, such as enabling the user to control tone (registering of an easy-to-hear tone) by simply turning a knob, emphasizing weak sounds (automatic amplification of hard-to-recognize weak sounds to an appropriate level), and supporting a hearing aid (a built-in induction coil to work with a hearing aid).
Combined with a specially designed FM transmitter, the On-sen-kyo has been successfully used in movie-viewing and other events organized for hearing-impaired persons, as a support tool for hearing sound in high-quality.
With a view to developing an effective conversational English lesson system for hearing-impaired persons, the two companies will start a trial of the newly developed Conversational English Web Lesson with hearing-impaired persons in Tokyo at the end of September 2002. A study group will be set up with these users so that their opinions are taken into account in the refinement of the system.
Both ECC and NTT-AT are taking this opportunity to renew their commitment to developing user-friendly communications tools and educational systems, and to providing services using these tools, as part of their long-term efforts to help develop a barrier-free society.
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- For details of ECC's Web Lesson and NTT-AT's On-sen-kyo, please refer to the websites shown above or ask for brochures.
