...Hills Antenna & TV System, supplier of set-top boxes (STBs), to release the first of its kind 'Talking' STB in Australia. The Talking Set Top Box, Hills HD94003G, was developed with the assistance of the Australian Government and Vision Australia. As part of the Digital Switchover scheme, the Australian government have adopted the text-to-speech software and is investing millions to provide visually impaired users with digital Talking set-top boxes that contain Ocean Blue's advanced Talking TV software. It is designed to enable blind and partially sighted people to navigate through the various digital channels, using a text to speech menu and EPG. The Hills HD94003G is a high definition STB using Ocean Blue's award winning Text to Speech software. This assistive technology was first developed between Ocean Blue Software and the Royal National Institute of Blind (RNIB) in the U.K. The software provides human speech to voice the program guides and menu items to the user. It is designed to give greater visual clarity in operation, to be more intuitive and easy to use, creating a better user experience than normally associated with Digital Receivers.
The STB includes an advanced remote control designed for ease of use, with large high contrast buttons. The remote control has a training button which allows an audible description of all of the remote control buttons. It also provides a definitive visual and audio feedback when the buttons are pressed. This audio beep can also be turned off if preferred. The STB includes Audio Description, that when broadcast, provides an audio narration of the visual scene. The Set top box also has the ability for Audio Description to be heard (when broadcast) from the headphone jack and/or the set top box output. A unique feature included with the STB (that may be required in the future) is the ability to decode MHEG-5 free to air unencrypted signals. Ocean Blue supplied the complete middleware software solutions including DVB HD, USB PVR MHEG MD and Talk TV software.
It is estimated 10-15 percent of the world's population could have sight loss, visual impairment, or be effected by dyslexia or similar reading disabilities and would benefit from this assisted living technology. Every 5 seconds one person in the world goes blind. The prevalence of sight loss increases with age, and the world's population is ageing. The Set Top Box is available from any of the eight Hills Antenna & TV Systems branches and will soon be available from the Vision Australia website and their branches.