On-demand lipspeaking service LipsLive announced

An innovative new on-demand lipspeaking service called LipsLive™ has been announced, aimed at levelling the playing field for deaf and hard of hearing people who rely on lipreading.

From the 1st June 2021 lipreaders will be able to have instant access to a lipspeaker online when contacting companies who have signed up to this new service. Lipspeaker UK are behind the service.

|| Lipspeaking ||
Our team are so proud to introduce our NEW #LipsLive service. The UK's first on demand #Lipspeaking service for businesses and services to communicate with #deaf and #HardOfHearing lipreaders. For more information, visit our website https://t.co/igJXjWEVj8 pic.twitter.com/2M7dyT5zY2

— LipspeakerUK (@LipspeakerUK) May 4, 2021

Lesley Weatherson, director of Lipspeaker UK and the brains behind this new service explains:

In the UK deaf British Sign Language (BSL) users can chose who they want to use for online video relay services and can contact companies or government departments themselves at a time to suit.

“However deaf and hard of hearing people who lipread can use NGT (text relay) services but they are often busy, or they have to rely on family members or friends to make calls for them.

This doesn’t promote independence and often a deaf person doesn’t want their friends or family to know about their private lives or finances, for example.

I looked into creating a secure online platform for this new service but the costs were astronomical and starting from scratch didn’t seem to be a viable option for an untested service that may not be needed.

Funding was hard to access as many funding streams had never heard about professional lipspeakers and feedback assumed all deaf people use BSL.

We have a fabulous working relationship with SignVideo and after lengthy talks we had a business model that was viable and almost ready made. Why reinvent the wheel, so to speak. 

I talked to trusted lipspeaker colleagues about the idea and we agreed to cover the first three months opening hours on a rota basis to spread the work and to be on standby to support each other if any customer queues begin to form; wishful thinking!

The team are used to working on the online platform and have been doing so regularly through the pandemic so we knew the technology would work and work well.

Of course the success will rely on businesses and services joining the LipsLive™ network. If the concept works then the hours will be increased to match any potential demand.

Deaf people can be a powerful voice in persuading banks and public services, for example, to sign up for this to afford them independent access using their preferred method of communication at a time to suit. 

More information lipspoken or in BSL (both captioned) can be found on the following links:

https://lipspeaker.co.uk/our-services/lipslive/ lipspeaker version

If a company or public service would like to register for this service, or for more information, contact Lipspeaker UK at enquiries@lipspeaker.co.uk or visit www.lipspeaker.co.uk