AU2007100441A4

AU2007100441A4 - Go-Access! Personal Guide and Venue Access System

Info

Publication number: AU2007100441A4
Application number: AU2007100441A
Authority: AU
Inventors: Alex French; Nari Jennings
Original assignee: CAPTIONING STUDIO
Current assignee: CAPTIONING STUDIO
Priority date: 2007-05-28
Filing date: 2007-05-28
Publication date: 2007-06-28
Anticipated expiration: 2015-05-28
Also published as: AU2007100441B4

Description

EDITORIAL NOTE There are 2 pages of description MULTIPURPOSE PERSONAL GUIDE AND VENUE ACCESS SYSTEM This invention relates to improvements in systems for visitor access to museums, galleries, live events, theatre productions and other public venues. It offers enhanced access to foreign visitors and to people with hearing loss, deafness or OO vision impairment. It also offers commentary facilities and automated venue information to all visitors, including audible and visual assistance to help visitors navigate to exhibits within a museum, gallery or other public venue.

For many people, the experience of visiting a theatre, museum, gallery or other public venue can be challenging and not as enjoyable as it could be with the assistance of improved systems for access. Modern museums frequently utilise multimedia audio and video presentations which complement the traditional static exhibits and form an important part of the visitor experience, whilst the very visual nature of, for example, art galleries may be enhanced by audio commentaries to provide background on the artists and their works. Theatre is, N of course, an inherently multimedia presentation and relies on both audible and visual experiences to entertain the audience.

Hearing impaired people may not be able to hear all of the dialogue, commentary, music and sound effects associated with an exhibit or performance. Whilst many venues provide hearing loops which provide a direct audio feed to the visitor's hearing aid, not all hearing aids have the necessary loop compatibility and many hearing impaired people also find that such hearing augmentation provides discernment of only some of the soundtrack. One way to improve the visitor experience is to provide "captioning". Captioning is a realtime text display of the dialogue, together with a description of any sound effects and music. Caption text can be displayed either by manual or automated "cueing" of the text that has previously been prepared by a captioner; or by being input live by a captioner using a speech recognition system or by a stenocaptioner.

In a similar way, foreign language subtitles may be provided for visitors for whom the audio language used in the presentations is not their first language.

Whilst some deaf people may benefit from the provision of captioning, many communicate primarily not in a spoken language but in one of a number of national or international sign languages. Deaf visitors to public venues may have their experience enhanced by the provision of sign language interpretation of the audible aspects of the presentation.

Whilst a pre-recorded audio commentary, delivered by an FM-connected audio device or a portable player, provides a level of improved access for vision impaired visitors, access can be further enhanced by the provision of "audio description", which additionally describes in detail the visual aspects of the exhibit or performance.

At present, some video media and live performances may be "open captioned", subtitled or sign language interpreted, whereby the subtitles, captions or sign language interpreters are visible to everyone watching the presentation. Some visitors who do not require the access facilities may find the captions, subtitles or sign language interpreter distracting and, by their very nature, such facilities are impossible to provide in multiple languages without obscuring too much of the presentation.

The present invention enables the venue to provide a range of access options to 0 all its visitors, including commentaries and assistance with navigating to exhibits.

It has the benefit that it does not single out visitors with disabilities because all visitors may use identical personal venue access devices.

The present invention enables the venue to provide visual and audible access options to individual visitors, making it possible to deliver a wider range of access OO options to enhance all visitors' personal experience, by delivering their specific CK1 access requirements while not detracting from the experience of the other visitors around them.

The present invention offers the venue the ability to deliver live and pre-recorded venue announcements, including, in the event of emergency, recorded safety information in a number of languages, and in text. This ensures that all visitors receive announcements in a format that they can discern.

The present invention comprises three elements: one or more personal venue access devices, based on existing mobile computing devices, which are used to present the relevant access media to the visitor; the access package development software, which is used by the venue operator to create and manipulate the prerecorded access media, also to create customised automation scripts which are used to control the delivery of the access media in each physical location within the venue, and to synchronise the pre-recorded access media with the relevant multimedia presentations; and the access media server, which delivers the access media on demand to the personal venue access devices.

The personal venue access devices used in the present invention are based on devices which are commercially available from a large number of suppliers, reducing the reliance of venues on specialised equipment providers.

The present invention includes software which is a PC-based application suite allowing the access provider or venue to create media or utilise existing media for each access type and to develop automation control scripts and navigation information associated with each exhibit or performance.

The present invention includes software for the personal venue access device which receives caption or subtitle text, receives colour and formatting information from the captioning software and renders the text on the personal venue access device display; software for the personal venue access device which receives audio media for audio commentary, audio description or foreign language translation, and plays the audio on the personal venue access device in synchronisation with the multimedia presentation or live performance; and receives video media for sign language interpretation and plays the video on the personal venue access device in synchronisation with the multimedia presentation or live performance.

The server software component uses point-to-point and broadcast network communication protocols to deliver media and control data to the personal venue access devices over a wireless LAN connection, enabling the display devices to be highly portable.

Claims

2. The venue access system of claim 1 wherein an optional GPS receiver in the personal venue access device may be used to determine the exact location of the user within the venue, enabling the software in the personal venue access device to automatically select the access media that is linked to the nearest exhibit; and wherein an optional GPS receiver may be used to determine the location of the user within the venue and to provide to the personal venue access device visual and/or audible assistance to guide the user to the various exhibits.
3. The venue access system of claim 1 wherein pre-recorded access media (captions, foreign language subtitles, audio commentary, sign language and audio description) are delivered by one or more PC-based media servers in real time to the personal venue access devices via one or more wireless network access points.
4. The venue access system of claim 1 wherein live access media (audio commentary, captions, sign language interpretation and audio description) are delivered via one or more PC-based media servers in real time to the personal venue access devices via one or more wireless network access points. THE CAPTIONING STUDIO PTY LTD 28 MAY 2007 Alex French (director) Nari Jennings (operations manager)