In all Bachelor's degree programmes in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, students take an interdisciplinary project in the 4th or 5th semester in which they work together with students from other subject areas. This is often the moment when they really realise what role they can and will play later in their careers with their very specific skills.

Prof. Thomas Ritz, Dean of the Faculty, explains: "The interdisciplinary projects are a core part of the concept of our degree programmes here at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology. After the joint core studies, we give students as many options as possible. If they wish, they can focus their studies according to their inclinations or take a more interdisciplinary approach and choose elective modules from related subject areas. In an interdisciplinary project - as later in the company - both the specialists and the students at the interface function who can mediate between two subject areas are needed. And this is exactly where we come in."

Students from the electrical engineering, computer science and MCD degree programmes have worked together to build a prototype for communication with deafblind people.

There are around 8,000 deaf-blind people living in Germany who can neither hear nor see, or at least have severe visual impairments. Many deafblind people find it very difficult to communicate with the outside world, as everyone communicates in their own way. LORMEN is the most common, but not every deafblind person can also speak Lormen. The aim of the project was to develop a prototype that would make communication with deafblind people as easy as possible. The project is based on Morse code, which is transmitted via vibration.

The prototype consists of two components: A transmitter and a receiver. Speech is converted into Morse code on the transmitter side. These are sent to the receiver and output via vibration.

Michael Sachse-Schüler, a deaf-blind person and regional group leader of the PRO RETINA association, a self-help organisation for people with retinal degeneration, visited the students and tested the prototype. He sees the clear advantage of the prototype in the fact that it is not a human, but a machine that can approach a communication speed that a "translating" human could not deliver.

But he also sees disadvantages. For example, Morse code requires several signals for a single letter, which again greatly lengthens communication.

This statement is by no means demotivating for the project participants, as it was clear from the outset that Morse code would be used for the first draft and would later have to be replaced with Lormen or Braille characters. The first prototype is to be followed by a second one. Prof Snjezana Gligorevic, who led the project on behalf of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, is optimistic: "The project will certainly be continued. After the exchange with Mr Sachse-Schüler, we know how we can do it better!"

The path to the "free-floating communication" that Mr Sachse-Schüler dreams of has not yet been completed, but the students can look back on consistently positive experiences: for example, they have done pair programming for the first time, gained important basic knowledge from the other disciplines (for example, that in electrical engineering you cannot simply transfer zeros and ones to represent analogue signals, but must first convert them) or learned how to record a video and later cut it to fit. The app that the students have developed is also very useful. The other person can speak a sentence into the app, which can then be heard in the form of Morse code through the mobile phone vibration.

Overall, they find that they have worked much more practically for the duration of the project than is usually the case in the already strongly practice-oriented degree programme at FH Aachen.

"I think our project can really help and serve as a basis so that others can learn from the mistakes and experiences we have made," summarises one of the participants.

In addition to working together in an interdisciplinary team, in which each subject area was able to contribute its specific strengths, the students also learnt something important for their future careers: how to deal with critical feedback, take on board suggestions and develop them further.

Click here for the video Interdisciplinary project "Communication with deafblind people", realised by Thomas Julian Schöning, student in the Bachelor Media and Communications for Digital Business.