Portfolio: BC Family Hearing Application & Website

Overview

The British Columbia Family Hearing Resource Centre is a welcoming place for all families with babies and young children with hearing loss. Since 1982 centre has created a warm and friendly learning environment that many families call ‘home’.

Their highly qualified, experienced and dedicated staff work in partnership with families to provide quality programming appropriate for each individual child and family. Acknowledged leaders in the field of early intervention for young deaf and hard of hearing children, their book, My Turn to Learn: An Up to Date Guide for Parents of Babies and Young Children with Hearing Loss, is used world wide by parents and professionals-in- training.

With a state-of-the-art world-class facility, they are commitment to accessibility for deaf and hard of hearing people, and the technology that makes this possible. To expand upon this technology, BC Family Hearing Resource Society approached STI to develop a Virtual Hearing Resource Centre that would allow their professionals to conference with families from a distance through live text based chat, sign language (video) and audio. This, along with a full user registration system, appointment scheduling and admin area that can not only track past appointments but is also able to monitor current appointments to see who is busy and what is going on.

Following the success of the Virtual Hearing Resource Centre application, we were asked to create a new website for the organization as well, based heavily on their publication, My Turn to Learn. With book excerpts, documents, an online library of publications and video, as well as organizational information, the site has become a rich resource for both families of children who have a hearing loss or believe their children may.

Beyond the initial development, STi has maintained an ongoing relationship with the centre, providing website and server management, as well as ongoing application development and onsite technology consulting and training.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.	Client: BC Family Hearing Society
	Date: 01/2008
	Category: Web Solutions
	Credits:
	Planning & Programming - Graeme Bull Creative Direction & Design - Kris Honeycutt
	View Website

Design & Technology

We have combined the power of Adobe Flash and Adobe Flash Media Server to provide the live video/audio and text messaging in the application, which, along with the site, ties into a backend created with an MSSQL database and ASP programming with XML used to pass data back and forth between them. The application UI and administration was designed to be highly usable by an audience who may or may not have a high level of internet or computer experience.