Talk Slower Please - Do you talk too fast on the phone?
June 8th, 2007 by Casey
In the last year or so, there’s been plenty of talk about creating mobile phones for the elderly where their needs may be different (bigger buttons and bigger displays are a frequent request… along with fewer features). However, who knew that one of the complaints of the elderly (at least according to Japanese telco NTT DoCoMo) is that the people they were talking to talk too fast?
Apparently it’s an issue, and for some reason, asking them to speak slower wasn’t an effective solution. So, the wizards at Fujitsu have built a special phone for DoCoMo which will be targeted at the elderly that (no, seriously) will slow… down… the… speech… of… the… person… you’re… talking… to. It’s designed to slow down their speech to about 70% of the speed that they’re actually talking, elongating each word. However, to avoid too much of the “lag” problem, it makes sure that you never get more than 1 full second behind. If it hits a second, it speeds back up to real time.
The phone has all the other standard features of a phone for the elderly (large display, large buttons), and also a built in pedometer and an 80-decibel alarm in case they “they should fall over and need to attract attention.” Unfortunately, when someone comes to help them in person, the elderly person (apparently) won’t be able to understand their rescuer since they’ll probably be speaking too fast and there’s still no tool for them to slow down the speech of the person standing in front of you.
From Techdirt.
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