Emergency call apps for the speech or hearing-impaired persons

Abstract

In general, we call the emergency 999 hotline for police assistance when we encounter with accident or danger. However, the speech and/or hearing-impaired persons would have difficulties to make emergency calls via the 999-emergency call. In Hong Kong, when speech and/or hearing-impaired persons come across an emergency, they can send an SMS to the 922 Emergency SMS system for police assistance. The system only accepts text message and the deaf-mute who are registered in certain institutions, also they need to update their information if they have changed the phone number afterward. According to the statistics from government, there are more than two hundred thousand of people are deaf and speech-impaired, but only less than 1% of them registered the system. Moreover, numbers of 922 user report that they cannot receive prompt assistance from police or even no response. In order to ensure deaf and speech-impaired people could receive emergency assistance timely, developing a mobile application could help them seek for help more easily. The mobile application allows them to call the emergency 999 hotline by using text to speech technology, also locating the person by using GPS from mobile. Additionally, provide different functions to help them in some emergency situations. The objectives of the project: 1. Allow users to call the emergency 999 hotline for emergency 2. Allow users to inform their contact persons for emergency 3. Allow users to get nearby hospital and police station with direction 4. Provide alarm, voice and flashlight function for users