The application of speech coding to AUDETEL services for visually impaired people

AUDETEL is a system for transmitting a spoken audio description of the television picture for visually impaired people, within the standard television channel, but separately from the normal television sound. AUDETEL has been developed by a consortium which is supported by the European TIDE (Technology Initiative for Disabled and Elderly people) initiative. As well as looking at the various editorial, operational and marketing issues, the AUDETEL consortium is overcoming the technical difficulties of setting up such a service. This paper gives an overview of the work which has been carried out to solve one of these technical problems-how to transmit an additional speech signal within the existing television channel. The resulting digital speech coding and transmission systems has been one of the achievements of the AUDETEL project