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ANCHOR, RON MACNEIL
At the Bell Museum in Baddeck today the work of inventor Alexander Graham Bell will be remembered and advanced. People from as far away as Australia will check out new technology to help people who are hearing impaired. This technology will be tested at the University College of Cape Breton. Let’s meet a couple of people who plan to be in Baddeck today Ron MacNeil executive director of the Bell Institute at the University College of Cape Breton. Good Morning.

RON MACNEIL
Good morning.

ANCHOR
David Leitch is director of St. Mary’s University Atlantic Center of support for students with disabilities. Hello Mr. Leitch.

DAVID LEITCH
Good morning Ein and good morning Ron.

MACNEIL
Good morning David.

ANCHOR
Mr. Leitch what’s this technology that will be talked about today in Baddeck?

LEITCH
This is speech recognition technology and it is really a modified application of speech recognition technology. Traditionally it has been used as a kind of dictation tool but what we are doing is using it in a very novel setting, which is in a classroom. So we’ve modified it to suit that environment.

ANCHOR
How does it work?

LEITCH
Very simply. As the professor is speaking in a classroom his voice is digitized and it’s displayed in text on a screen at the front of the classroom and also because it is digitized it’s available after the class for students as a transcript of the actual lecture.

ANCHOR
Now what difference would that make to a person who’s hearing is impaired?

LEITCH
Well it’s not just persons who are hearing impaired but certainly for that group of course that can’t hear the lecture they have difficulty hearing the lecture so the first time ever they’re going to be able to see the words. They’re going to be able to see the lecture and of course there are many people in our schools who have a learning disability. That population of people traditionally have not been good auditory learners. They listen to something but they have trouble getting the essence of it. So for that population of people as well they will be able to actually see the lecture again. Then there are a group of students in education who have for instance spinal cord injuries and they’re not physically able to take their notes and historically they’ve had to rely on other people to take their notes but now with this system they won’t have to rely on those other people.

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ANCHOR
Well Mr. MacNeil what role is the Bell Institute at UCCB playing in testing out this technology?

MACNEIL
The Bell Institute at UCCB will be establishing classroom pilot test activities here on campus actually duplicating tests that are happening on other campuses. To establish this technology as in the real setting to first deliver the benefits that David talked about but also to test the impact and to look for ways of approving the application.

ANCHOR
I wonder what Alexander Graham Bell would think of this Mr. MacNeil.

MACNEIL
I think he may join us today.

ANCHOR
Is that right?

MACNEIL
I think very much it’s very directly in keeping with the spirit of the work that he done and in fact it’s the mission of the Bell Institute to address that and this project the liberated learning project lead by St. Mary’s and Dr. Leitch is a perfect setting of the kind of work that we’re trying to do at the Bell Institute.

ANCHOR
Mr. MacNeil today is the first I heard of anything about the Bell Institute at UCCB. What happens there?

MACNEIL
The Bell Institute was established to take materials that Alexander Graham Bell and other research colleagues gathered while they were doing work at Embrya in Baddeck and there’s a huge amount of material there and what we’ve done is in our first step is to digitize a lot of the material and we made it available in a couple of different formats. One on the word wide web at our website at bell.uccb.ns.ca but also as a kiosk in the Bell Museum and also in Branford Ontario as a kiosk. So we were very excited to make a lot of that material available and it includes for instance over a thousand photographs scientific photographs that were taken during the development of the hydrofoil and aircraft in Baddeck. Obviously the next thing we wanted to do is mission-oriented research and this project is a perfect fit for that.

ANCHOR
Mr. MacNeil what’s your hope for today at this gathering in Baddeck?

MACNEIL
My hope for today is to be able to first learn very much more about what’s been going on with this project over the past year which has been as we are a new test campus for this activity but also I’m very interested in exploring other ways we can use this technology for benefit of individuals in particular looking at network based distributed applications of this type of technology.

ANCHOR
And you David Leitch what’s your hope for today?

LEITCH
Well I want to pick up on something Ron said and connecting with something that Bell has said and that is that great discoveries and great improvements invariably come with a cooperation of many minds and we’ve got the people incredible people coming from Australia, from Stanford University, from Ontario, from New York, and they’re going to be working in that environment in that spirit and I think that spirit will be with us in Baddeck and I’ll tell you they are very enthusiastic about coming to such a beautiful location and one that has so much historical in scientific meaning so it’s pretty exciting.

ANCHOR
Well thank you for sharing that excitement and this information with our Cape Breton listeners today.

LEITCH
Our pleasure. My pleasure I’m looking forward to the time in Baddeck.

MACNEIL
Thank you.

ANCHOR
Good bye now.

MACNEIL
Bye.

LEITCH
Good bye Ron.

MACNEIL
Bye.

ANCHOR
Ron MacNeil executive director of the Alexander Graham Bell institute at the UCCB. David Leitch is director of St. Mary’s University’s Atlantic Center of Support for Students with Disabilities.

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JR/Sydney

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