8th November 2010:
Wright State University and Communication Service for the Deaf, Inc., selects Nefsis for video conferencing among American Sign Language users; Nefsis has special features suiting Deaf ASL users
8 November 2010. Wright State University and Communication Service for the Deaf, Inc. has selected the Nefsis solution for video conferencing among American Sign Language (ASL) users.
Nefsis'already has a growing roster of ASL users, interpreters and related service providers. These include select chapters of Network Interpreting Service, LiNKS Sign Language & Interpreting, Interwest Interpreting, Gallaudet University, Rochester Institute of Technology, California State University, PEPnet, Malayasia Manmin Deaf Church, and many more outreach, educational, healthcare and non-profit organizations that serve the Deaf and hard of hearing community.
Company officials attribute the growth to improving bandwidth, widely available webcams and the company's multi-core software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology designed specifically for high-frame-rate video conferencing. High performance is a requirement for seamless signing and fingerspelling during an online meeting.
In addition to cloud computing and multi-core software, Nefsis offers detailed controls over conference room-wide and user-by-user video quality settings, including resolution and frame rate.
"Many Nefsis customers accept the default video settings and click 'Play All' once everyone is in their conference room. ASL translators and other video-savvy meeting hosts often take this a step further by manually increasing the frame rate for the best possible sign language experience," said Tom Toperczer, Nefsis vice president of marketing.
"Nefsis software makes this easy by highlighting what's possible, and graying-out what's not, based on the participant's current computer, camera and real-time bandwidth conditions," he added.
Many interpreting services and educational institutions have fully outfitted rooms with standalone, video conferencing hardware such as units manufactured by Polycom and Tandberg, serving their ASL users and translators. With dedicated bandwidth, these installed-site systems deliver the high-quality needed for effective signing among meeting participants.
The challenge for interpreters and hard of hearing workers, students and patients is limited reach -- fixed-site locations have limited availability, require a lot of scheduling coordination and often travel. In addition, the capital equipment expense is untenable outside most existing locations.
Nefsis solves these problems via its cloud-based video conferencing online service that is accessible from virtually any desktop computer with Internet access. Nefsis supports popular webcams, conference room pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras and HD equipment. Its multi-core software takes advantage of Intel® Core™2 Duo and later symmetric multiprocessors, including 4, 8 and 16 core CPUs, significantly improving video performance.