A deal between the Canadian Hearing Society and SkyFrames will bring the Internet to deaf people in rural communities: As part of the agreement, SkyFrames will use Wi-Fi and satellite backhaul to offer Internet service to rural areas, specifically targeting hearing impaired people. The idea is to offer video conferencing to the deaf, who often prefer to communicate through a visual medium like video conferencing, according to the society.
The San Francisco Chronicle recently noted that Apple's iSight camera combined with iChat AV, an audio/video conference program that Mac OS X 10.2 users can buy and is bundled with the about-to-be-released Mac OS X 10.3, has been highly effective for hearing-impaired users: the frame refresh rate and picture size is high enough to handle signing.