Скачать или смотреть Computer programme to help Stephen Hawking speak

(2 Dec 2004)
New Delhi and Mumbai, India - November 16, 2004/|FILE
FILE: Mumbai - January 14, 2001
1. Professor Stephen Hawking being escorted down corridor
2. Prof Hawking entering presser
3. Prof Hawking "speaking" using Equaliser
4. Close of screen on Prof Hawking's wheelchair
5. Remote in the professor's hands
6. Prof Hawking being applauded as he appears on stage
7. Close up of the professor in his wheelchair
New Delhi - November 16, 2004
8. Screen shot of the help pages of the eLocutor software
9. Dr Arun Mehta working at his laptop
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Arun Mehta, Software programmer "What our software does..."
11. Close up Dr Mehta's face, tilt down to hands on laptop keyboard
12. Close ups of various photos of Dr Mehta and Professor Hawking working on the programme during its development
13. Screen shot of the help pages of the eLocutor software
14. Wide of Dr Mehta working on the programme on his desktop computer
15. Computer monitor with programme on screen
16. Close up Dr Mehta's face
17. Close up hand on mouse
18. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Arun Mehta, Software programmer "It seemed to us..."
FILE: Mumbai - January 14, 2001
19. Close up of remote control in Professor Hawking's hand, tilt up to his face
20. Wide of Professor Hawking making presentation on stage
SUGGESTED LEAD-IN:
When paralysed British physicist Stephen Hawking needed to update the software that helps him communicate he made a global appeal for help.
It was a determined group of techies in India who rose to the challenge, developing a new programme called eLocutor.
The innovators with a social conscience have now made the software free in the hope it will help change the lives of disabled people in poor countries.
VOICE-OVER:
Stephen Hawking is one of the world's most recognisable scientists.
The professor, who suffers from degenerative motor neurone disease, became an international celebrity with his book A Brief History Of Time.
Almost completely paralysed, Professor Hawking has for years relied on custom-made software to communicate.
But the hardware that runs the "Equaliser" voice synthesiser is now obsolete.
To make things worse, the source code for the software has been lost, so the system can't been maintained or modified.
During a visit to India in 2001, the British professor appealed for help.
Now new software has been developed to help him speak.
eLocutor tries to predict what the user wants to type or do next.
All you need to operate it is one finger that moves.
Dr Arun Mehta led the team that developed the software.
SOUNDBITE (English)
"What our software does, eLocutor, is that it makes it possible for him (Prof Hawking) to efficiently type text using a single button. His problem is that he can only press one button. And so, the software tries to a) predict what he wants to type next and b) tries to learn from what he has already typed or from text that he had typed earlier which we feed into the database, so that the words that he uses frequently, sentences that he uses frequently, are available to him quickly. He can take existing sentences and adapt them to make new sentences which works out faster than typing out letter by letter."
SUPER CAPTION: Dr Arun Mehta, Software programmer
Dr Mehta says he had to imagine himself as Professor Hawking's in order to start visualising the software.
The pair met several times during its development.
The resulting eLocutor speech synthesiser is faster than "Equaliser" and easy to use.
But what is really exciting Dr Mehta now is the global potential of "Project Hawking"
SOUNDBITE (English)

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