Vocalis Extends Access to the Government's "New Deal" Scheme

Vocalis, the international speech recognition telephony company, are pleased to announce their involvement in the Government's New Deal initiative in partnership with The Hephzibah Intro-Net Project and Reed New Deal. Reed is the Private Sector Lead Delivery Partner of New Deal in the Hackney and City District. New Deal enables candidates to access provision from a number of local partners who each have a particular area of expertise.

The Hephzibah Intro-Net Project offers job seekers Internet courses and related work experience as part of the New Deal scheme. Hephzibah uses the revolutionary Vocalis Internet products, SpeecHTML (which allows people to access websites by telephone) and SpeechMail (which allows people to access their email by telephone) as part of the syllabus.

Chris Melvin, Operations Director of Reed sees partnership as the heart of New Deal. He comments: " New Deal is aimed at helping unemployed people back to work by closing the gap between the skills employers want and the skills people can offer. The joint partnership approach allows a unified effort by local providers and businesses and encourages innovation to help overcome barriers to employment."

George Hargreaves, MD of The Hephzibah Intro-Net Project, explains, "In the Internet Age, the skills training offered by Hephzibah and Vocalis are invaluable. We are introducing these new technologies, which are vital in all areas of commerce today, to all those who take part in the scheme." Hargreaves has already implemented SpeecHTML on his other commercial websites and describes the product as "amazing".

SpeecHTML and SpeechMail are opening up the Internet to anyone with access to a telephone. The benefits are enormous, as Charles Halle, Chief Executive of Vocalis, explains. "SpeecHTML and SpeechMail are new complementary products for the Internet, allowing businesses to increase access to their website, using the telephone, and individuals access to a wealth of information previously inaccessible without a computer. The New Deal trainees will benefit from being involved in leading edge technology."

Hephzibah train candidates for three to six months on PCs, the Internet and HTML, the hypertext mark-up language used in web design. Hephzibah will then look to place their candidates in positions of employment once they have been trained.