Using mobile devices to support communication between emergency medical responders and deaf people

Abstract

Fast and effective communication is crucial during medical emergencies, but patients' disabilities can make it a challenging task for emergency medical responders. This paper proposes a mobile system to deal with the communication barrier between medical responders and deaf patients. The system allows medical responders to quickly browse a collection of emergency-related sentences, and show videos of the corresponding translations in sign language to the deaf patients. The design process involved experts in emergency medicine as well as experts from the deaf community. The evaluation carried out on ten emergency medical responders and ten deaf subjects showed that the system is useful to support communication with deaf people during medical emergencies.