Video Transcript for "What is Ai-Live^™?"

VOICEOVER: Every year, over 500 babies born in Australia are deaf. This year, almost 10,000 children will have difficulty hearing what’s happening in class. In June 2009, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Dr Brendan Nelson announced a new plan to aid early detection of hearing loss.

KEVIN RUDD: So that in 18 months, every newborn will be able to benefit from a universal hearing screening in Australia.

VOICEOVER: Tony Abrahams and Alex Jones formed Ai-Media in 2003, a social enterprise dedicated to providing captioning and other access solutions.

TONY ABRAHAMS CEO, Ai-Media: Last year's announcement by the Prime Minister and Dr Nelson means that we now actually can identify from birth all of the kids at risk of hearing impairments. What we are looking to do is to ensure that those kids, once identified, have access to the same information as hearing kids in the classroom.

ALEX JONES Co-Founder/Director, Ai-Media: Around about 85% of deaf children in Australia go to mainstream schools. If we have one deaf child within the classroom, then we need an Auslan interpreter to work with them in the classroom, as well as an itinerant teacher, as well as a note-taker. So we have three people involved in giving support.

LEONIE JACKSON Head of Education Access, Ai-Media: I have worked in education for 18 years. And to be honest, as a teacher, I found that there was a lot of barriers in teaching English and in teaching literacy, because when you teach in Auslan, there is no English translation happening within the classroom.

TONY ABRAHAMS: There's no reason for these kids to be falling behind. Deaf kids are 2.5 times less likely to even finish high school today, and that's a statistic we wanted to start to have an impact with.

VOICEOVER: In late 2006, Ai-Media began to look at ways to deliver live captioning into schools. 3.5 years later, following extensive testing, Ai-Live is now ready for launch.

VIRENDRA RAHEJA CTO, Ai-Media: It turned into a very simple process that was evolved over time, where the audio from the classroom, from the teacher, was taken out and streamed to our captioners in a remote location. Captioners in turn respoke that into our streaming text software, which appeared on the laptops of the students in the class in less than seven seconds. And the experience of these students was actually mind-blowing.

SALLY PAPE Support Teacher Hearing Impairment: In English, I have worked with a student who was in Year 9 last year, and from the very first session she engaged with the teacher, not just with her interpreter. So she was focusing on what was going on in the whole classroom, not just within our little pocket of the classroom.

STUDENT, YR 9: Feeling part of the classroom conversations is the best part.

SALLY PAPE: She did all her homework, all her assignments, and she went from the bottom of the class to coming first in the yearly exam. It was a huge change.

STUDENT, YR 9: It enables me to access all the information on everything.

ANN PORTER (Founder, Aussie Deaf Kids): We need solutions in education like Ai-Live that is going to motivate children and help them and prepare them for this changing world that they face.

LEONIE JACKSON: From the feedback we've got from the students within the pilot program so far, they think it's cool to bring their laptop into class and the other students think that it's cool that they have captions within the classroom. They can communicate directly with the teacher, and I find this very exciting.

STUDENT, YR 11: I would like captioning to be part of me future. It would be helpful when I’m at university as well as at school.

ALEX VARLEY CEO, Media Access Australia: What they've actually done is they've thought about not just the students, but also how the teachers use the service and actually how they're going to deliver the service.

ANN PORTER: This technology is using computers that the Federal Government is handing out, so every child is going to sit with the computer on their, you know, with the laptop on their desk, so it's not going to single them out as being different.

WARREN PARKES High School Principal: Captioning provides a level of interaction between the deaf student and the teacher that I never had experienced before. For the first time, the teacher knows the children understand and are getting the work, and the children can provide direct feedback to the teacher without going through a person sitting next to them interpreting the work for them. It's very rapid, it's very quick. So it is a realistic option for increasing and improving the learning of students within the classroom.

ALEX JONES: There will be roads, avenues, doors will be opened for my son, not only for his future, but for the future of his friends who are deaf also. They will all have value and benefit.

TONY ABRAHAMS: It's a solution that is tested, is reliable and is scalable. And it means that going forwards, no deaf kid needs to be left behind and no-one needs to be out of work just because they can't hear. And that's really what Ai-Live means, and it's exciting.

RESPEAKER: It is audio to text in real time comma anywhere full stop.

VOICEOVER: This is Ai-Live.