Magen David Adom launches new service for the hearing impaired
posted in Current Affairs, Deaf, Hearing Loss, Technology |Magen David Adom is Israel’s equivalent of Red Cross. They just came out with a new services allowing deaf/hard of hearing to call for help by texting MDA dispatch, as reported in Ynetnews.
Text messages received at Magen David Adom’s central dispatch will be immediately displayed on a plasma screen along with a vocal alert to on-call staff. The new service will also allow MDA staff to send a text message back, informing the original sender that help is on the way.
Some 650,000 people living in Israel are hearing impaired. In accordance with the instructions of Magen David Adom’s Chief Medical Officer, Eli Bin, the new text service will be taking over for the fax service MDA introduced a decade ago.
The text service, like the fax service before it, is considered a breakthrough in emergency services’ accessibility.
Will be real handy for the next wave of suicide bombers or rockets coming from Gaza, West Bank, or Lebanon. And no, I’m not being sarcastic.