The elderly people find immense difficulties to communicate in the TV and mobile environments through standard text based computer tools such as email. Reading and writing long texts in the TV or mobile is inconvenient even for ordinary users: it is difficult to type; it is difficult to read, etc. Speech to text and text to speech could be an option, but those technologies are still inaccurate and they are not really need in this context. Video is a perfect media to communicate with the family, other users or assistance services. VITAS platform includes several video based services such as Videoconferencing and video-email (short posted video messages) for the purpose of communication. However, video can be also used for other communication purposes such as a video diary. Many elderly users find difficulties to remember things or simply would like to have a diary but are not fond of too much writing.

Recording the happenings of the day in video and storing it in the format of a “conventional” diary that can be easily browsed and shared with other persons could be an attractive tool for many people.

VITAS and the VITAL project were co-financed by the European Commission.