Cloud-Based Alerting System for IP-Telephony : A prototype development

Abstract: An increasing number of people in Sweden are having problems with their hearing ability. The three major tools to aid hearing-impaired and deaf individuals are: hearing aids, special telephony, and alerting systems. Both hearing aids and telephony have seen a huge technical development. Hearing aids have gone from huge ponderous devices to small delicate in-ear devices. Simple text telephones have evolved into total conversation telephones with audio, video, and text all operating in real time. Although smart lamps and other alerting services not specifically made for hearing-impaired individuals do exist, the development of alerting system is unsatisfactory. The gap in technology is a huge problem and integration between modern products and alerting systems is getting harder. This thesis explores how to close this gap. The result of this thesis project is a prototype that provides the missing technological link between an alerting systems and modern smart devices. An eventual product should support all kinds of services, but the prototype is limited to solving the problem of connecting an alerting system to a modern total conversation telephones. The prototype was evaluated and based on the evaluation data a timeline was created. An overall positive response towards the product exists and the timeline had adding more third party services (such as Skype and FaceTime) as a high priority. The complete timeline as well as adding Signal Initiation Protocol support is left as future work.