Jader Pelligra, a ICT student at the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology’s University College, has designed and developed a computer-based telephony solution that will enable people with disability to use MS Windows-based computers to handle voice-based communication. By doing away with inaccessible telephone hand-sets, they will be able undertake many clerical job tasks that were previously inaccessible to them.
Pelligra recently donated his software’s source code to Foundation for Information Technology Accessibility (FITA) which successful ran accessibility assessments on the software and included it among the ICT Pool solutions hosted at the Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA), Blata l-Bajda.
The ICT solution enables users to make and receive phone calls by using their computer instead of a telephone hand-set. The system is geared for home use but is adaptable to different situations. The features in the new telephony application communicate with the private bench exchange (PBX/handset) and include calling, hanging up, recording a call, playing music, muting microphone, auto record and call dialing.
In the days of dial-up internet, modems with voice support capabilities were popular, and one could easily and cheaply enable a person who could not use a standard phone set, but still had access to a computer, to communicate using the phone, via their PC. With the introduction of ADSL and cable-based internet this hardware became harder to find, and nowadays most software no longer supports it.