Hi. Has anybody seen a Captioned Telephone called CapTel 800i (http://www.captel.com/800i.php)?
Or how about WebCapTel from Sprint (https://www.sprintcaptel.com/index.asp)?
Once registered in Sprint CapTel, you simply log in, input your phone number, and input the phone number you wish to call. When you do that, Web CapTel will call you. Once you answer the phone, the system will then dial the number you just entered. The Caller Assistant is very transparent between two callers, as their job is to speak into the computer what the third party said and the computer translates it into text so that the caller can read text to an extent that the caller cannot hear over the phone. There is an option for WebCapTel users to receive calls once they dial a toll-free number.
But there are a couple of problems with WebCapTel:
First, WebCapTel acts just like a regular one-line CapTel (http://www.captel.com/). But before I discuss anything further, I’d like to discuss about CapTel. First, you don’t get it at retail stores; you get it from state relay service who can provide you a CapTel phone, provided you are either hard of hearing/hearing impaired or deaf (a deaf user would go for teletypewriter for the deaf (TTY) but instant messaging, text messaging, and video calling replaces TTY).
Compared to WebCapTel, you still have to log in, enter your phone number to call you, and enter the phone number you wish to dial. But with CapTel, all your have to do is pick up your phone and dial the phone number. The text comes up in the screen after the answerer speaks to you. If you have two phone jacks, you must have landline in order for CapTel to work without getting garbled text. That means, you can’t just go with VoIP alone.
This solves it with CapTel 800i, but it won’t replace a VoIP adapter, unfortunately. However, you get the bonus that you can receive calls without callers dialing a 1-800 number just to get to you. That is, as long as you can deal with wires – even during traveling when it comes to setting up a remote extension.
Now I got the first problem out of the way, I want to discuss about the issue with receiving call from WebCapTel in order for the system to call someone that I dialed. What I mean is, when I dial 7777 to simulate an incoming call, I get to my main menu with my custom-recorded voice that has a Star Tours-themed chime sound, plus with an identification of my name and offer a caller to leave a quick voicemail or wait/press any number to connect their call so I can answer. Okay, let’s get that out of the way. So, when a system dials my phone number, Asterisk will answer it and WebCapTel will assume that I’ve just picked up the phone and will dial the inputted number automatically, without a single ring from Asterisk.
Yes, I know I can forget about IVR+queues with weather-checking application and all that stuff (heck, even new age music from Ray Lynch) so that WebCapTel will work for me, but it’s who I am and I’d like to set myself apart from others and well – it’s what identifies me, with all that Star Tours chime sound, my voice for main menu, my announcement saying “you’re calling Grayson Peddie! Please hold” and the sample music begins (my mom complimented me for having space-age music :)).
Okay, I don’t mean to bore anyone with my lecture and it’s being too long, so let me get to the point here with my question in bold:
Is it possible to implement speech dictation into Asterisk and have Asterisk send text out through SIP? Granted, speech dictation technology (even Windows Vista’s built-in speech recognition technology) is not that great, but it can still be do-able, right? The way I think about it, I don’t want to record a call and have it sent to my e-mail address; instead, I want the dictator convert speech to text in real time. So once I develop an SIP application to get text out from Asterisk, I can read what the caller said, but I don’t want the dictator to dictate what I said.
This is something that I’d like to have this in my netbook so that I can take it with me wherever I go and that I don’t have to setup IP masquerading and carry two devices plus with all those wires, like an Ethernet cable, phone cord, two power adapters (addition to one power adapter for netbook), and–gee, it’d be a mess!
I’ve been pondering all the time. I’ve done enough research to find that there aren’t any information to satisfy what I’m looking for, but oh well…
Of course, I’d like to make a couple of off-topic statements that are not related to my thread. Despite my hearing impairment (hearing loss doesn’t seen to be severe, though), I’ve noticed that the audio quality through my headset sounded a lot better than talking through a cell phone. Ugh-- can’t stand that crummy/harsh sound but lowering the volume just doesn’t seem to help with the quality. 
But when I make calls to my family from my computer, it sounded loud and clear with clean sound, but it’d be nice if I could hear it in G.722 16kHz codec (not supported in X-Lite 3.0). No wonder my Samsung Ace (Windows Mobile 6.1) can’t deliver the audio as clean-sounding as my computer (it makes me think about discarding my cell phone but I’m in the middle of contract with Sprint since I am with a data-only plan with 20 to 25 cents a minute voice calls – hardly use my cell phone a lot).
Whew… What a lot of lecturing! 
