Although voice to text recognition packages are marketed primarily as a means for allowing people in businesses to create documents without using the keyboard, it is an application that holds great advantages for the hearing impaired, blind and physically handicapped, as well as people without special needs. These systems are reaching a very good level of development and begin to be widely available for PCs. The software that until now could only recognise words separated by short pauses, is being replaced by new releases, which present very significant improvements and recognise continuous dictated text. Finding solutions and ways of adapting this software for the use of a disabled person is in fact encouraged by this increase in market, affordability and user-friendliness.

The difficulties of the deaf go beyond the loss of hearing itself, and underline a more general problem of lack of communication. It is worth remembering that the number of the hearing impaired consists of between 1% and 5% of the population (according to the degree of the hearing loss), which represents millions of people in Europe. This field could be enlarged and include other categories, such as those who are loosing their hearing or have hearing problems. Moreover, a lack of communication similar to that experienced by the deaf also affects the disadvantaged, the people living in foreign environments and the elderly. When united, this group consists of more than 30% of the total population.

In some European countries, it is usual to think that hearing impaired people would had difficulties trying to learn to lip-read and speak and should therefore make use of sign language and attend special schools. In others there is another approach to the problem. In Italy the law encourages the integration of deaf children in the normal schools, with a remedial teacher, without the use of sign language. Some associations, like ALFA in Milan, are getting very good results from helping the children following this approach, and do so with children joining primary school right through to those finishing the University and finding job afterwards. Despite the fact that good results are achievable, these require an enormous effort, which could be greatly reduced through the use of new technologies.

A widely used application is the subtitling of television programmes, a very powerful help for deaf people, particularly for the language learning and training for deaf children. The importance of the educational aspect lies in the fact that subtitles are for a deaf child one of the most powerful learning tools of any language, just as a hearing child would learn from things it heard. Similarly, it gives the hearing-impaired adult the opportunity to enrich his vocabulary. Since subtitling of television programmes is the result of a manual preparation of files to be transmitted in Teletext format, most of the subtitled programmes are films. The subtitling of live programs and of the news is rarely performed.

The subtitling of conferences, even those addressed to the deaf, is usually not available. Sign language interpreters provide a significant help for the deaf who knows sign language, but other participants or partially hearing impaired, elderly and foreigners are unable to understand sign language. Moreover this activity is lost after the conference, being of no use in producing proceedings or abstracts.

In telephone communication, Text-telephones have already proved themselves vital from a deaf person's point of view. These systems do, however, present one major problem, that is, all people wishing to contact a deaf person on such a machine must possess one themselves. This makes such a means of communication awkward and expensive, both for the deaf and for those they wish to call.

• The Netd@ys VOICE Project;
• Annex 1: Applications of voice to text recognition for the deaf:
  User needs and state of the art;
• Annex 2: European dimension: the JRC-ISIS Exploratory Research VOICE Project;
• Annex 3: The VOICE Project - a Telematics Applications' Accompanying Measure;
• Annex 4: The VOICE-Schools Project;
• Annex 5: Partners and activities of the Netd@ys VOICE Project;
• Annex 6: Tasks of the Netd@ys VOICE Project;