PROCESSOR-ASSISTED COMMUNICATION SYSTEM USING TONE-GENERATING TELEPHONES

A processor-assisted system helps persons with speech or hearing handicaps communicate with any telephone caller having an ordinary tone generating telephone. With minimal training, the caller can communicate with the handicapped person using a one key per letter technique for spelling out words. Received keypad sequences are decoded by the processor and the decoded message is presented on a video display or monitor. Since there are three alphabetic letters on most of the keys of a tone generating telephone, the decoding process must take into account that more than one word might have been intended by a particular keypad sequence. The decoding process retrieves all possible words and allows the handicapped person to choose the appropriate word from the context of the sentence. According to one decoding process, all words which might be represented by a particular key sequence are stored in records including the keypad sequence. According to another decoding process, a word look-up process of the on-line spell checking type is employed.