According to WHO over 5% of the world’s population – 466 million people – has disabling hearing loss. In 2030 this figure is expected to increase to over 630 million people, which means that one out of ten people will have disabling hearing loss. In addition, WHO estimates that globally approximately 1.3 billion people live with some form of vision impairment and the majority of people with vision impairment are over the age of 50 years. Furthermore, the EU is home to over 60 indigenous regional or minority languages, spoken by some 40 million people. It also supports a twofold multilingualism policy striving to protect Europe’s rich linguistic diversity and promoting language learning. These people with impairments often face legal and social barriers, such as a lack of appropriate aids or inadequate integration into social and cultural life.
Kalliopê is a digital solution for transmedia storytelling and personalized communication with massive audiences. It is a mobile application able to deliver real-time accessibility services for live and pre-recorded audio and video, text and images. It can be personalized according to user profiling and needs (developed by Iglor and already validated in plenty of public massive events with up-to 70.000 simultaneous users for partners such as the well-known theatre company La Fura dels Baus.
In 2019, a new collaboration between IGLOR and UAB was established for the incorporation of an accessibility layer to the Kalliopê mobile application, in order to solve a clear demand of offering global solutions for accessible systems in live and on demand events. The result of this collaboration is a novel digital and easy to use platform able to create, manage and deliver all required accessibility services (subtitles, audio-description and sign language). This innovative solution also applies novel Internet of Things technologies and premises to massive communication, and is able to deliver live and personalized media content (text, audio, video, images…) offering a personalized delivery platform based on personal devices (Smartphones).