One touch, two languages: helping older people stay connected at home

A collaboration between Australian Multicultural Community Services (AMCS), CareWindow, EverYoung AI, Aged Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia (ARIIA) and Swinburne University’s Living Lab is exploring how accessible communication technology can support culturally and linguistically diverse older people, their families and care providers.

Connection begins with a familiar face

In the kitchen of his Melbourne home, Stergio Rovas leans towards a small screen on the bench. His daughter Betty appears on the display, speaking to him from her own home. The exchange looks ordinary - a father and daughter catching up - but the simplicity of the call is precisely what makes it valuable.

Stergio Rovas speaks to family and care providers using his CareWindow from the kitchen of his Melbourne home.

With CareWindow, Stergio can reach family - including daughters in Sydney and Melbourne - using a large, one-touch contact button rather than navigating a conventional smartphone or remembering a sequence of steps.

For an 89-year-old person living independently, the ability to see a familiar face can make communication warmer and more reassuring than a voice-only call. It can also give family members a better sense of how their loved one is feeling and whether anything at home needs attention.

“Dad can call easily, even with his hand tremor and hearing, without worrying about menus or passwords. Seeing him on the screen helps us feel close even when I am not physically there, and it gives me confidence that he can reach us when he needs to.” - daughter Betty Rovas.

When a second language becomes harder to retrieve

Stergio came to Australia from northern Greece as a young adult and used English extensively throughout his working life. Since retiring, however, he has fewer daily opportunities to speak it. During the home visit, he explained that English words no longer come as readily as they once did - a common and frustrating experience for some older migrants who increasingly rely on their first language.

That change can affect more than social conversation. It can make it harder to explain a need, describe symptoms, understand instructions or participate fully in a discussion with a care coordinator or support worker.

The CareWindow device is underpinned by EverYoung AI. This Artificial Intelligence technology provides Live translation during in-person conversations and Video-call translation during remote calls. Together, these functions provide voice translation and text transcription. After the user presses the on-screen button and speaks, the application identifies which of the two selected languages is being used, plays the translated words aloud in the other language, and displays both the original wording and the translation as text.

For Stergio, that means a conversation can move between Greek and English. He can hear the translated response and also read both versions on the screen. The same approach can be used with family members on a CareWindow video call or with a care professional standing beside him in the home.

During the video call, daughter Betty appears on Stergio’s CareWindow with translated text displayed on screen.

Designed for real homes, not ideal conditions

The visit also showed why assistive technology must be tested in everyday settings. Kitchens are busy, often shared spaces where family members frequently gather and interact. People speak at different speeds, accents vary, background noise changes and software must remain reliable after updates. AMCS staff, CareWindow support and EverYoung AI have continued to refine the experience in response to what happens in clients’ homes, rather than relying only on laboratory testing.

That ongoing support is an important part of the service. CareWindow can be adapted as a client’s needs and contact network change, while family members and care providers can receive help with setup, training and troubleshooting. Following the visit, CareWindow and EverYoung AI worked with AMCS to make the system more reliable and easier to use.

A collaborative home-care project

Stergio is one of the home-care recipients participating in “Empowering CALD Home Care with AI: Minimising Paperwork, Maximising Workforce Capacity”, a project examining how accessible digital technology can strengthen home care for people from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) backgrounds.

Australian Multicultural Community Services (AMCS), drawing on its experience supporting older people from various cultural and linguistic diverse backgrounds, led the project’s practical implementation in home-care settings. It purchased and distributed CareWindow devices to participating clients, supported their use in everyday routines and incorporated the technology into staff workflows. This allowed the project to examine not only whether clients could use the system, but also how the technology could support communication, documentation, care coordination and social/family connection.

CareWindow provided the communication platform, device customisation and continuing technical support. EverYoung AI developed and supports the embedded speech recognition, voice translation and text-transcription functions used during in-person conversations and video calls. Together, the partners responded to feedback from clients, families and AMCS staff as the technology was used in real homes.

“This project explored how video-calling and AI-supported translation assistive technology could improve home care services and communication with older adults from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) backgrounds who live independently. Trialing the technology in real home-care settings provided practical findings and identified opportunities for improvement, offering valuable insights for the EverYoung AI and CareWindow teams to further strengthen the technology, its integration and product design.” - Magdalena Biadala-Sahingoez, Manager - ICT, AMCS Services.

Researching what works in real-world care

Swinburne University of Technology was the project’s research lead. The Living Lab Team, embedded in the Centre for Design Innovation (CDI), focused on complex real-world challenges, conducted a systematic literature review of best-practice AI technologies and evidence-based outcomes in aged and healthcare settings. The CDI team also obtained research ethics approval, facilitated co-design workshops with participating staff, evaluated the EverYoung AI application and CareWindow device with staff in clients’ homes and as AMCS, and prepared analysed findings for academic and other research publications.

The research and evaluation considered both the client experience and the demands placed on the home-care workforce. AMCS integrated the solution into daily workflows to capture conversations and generate transcripts with next-action summaries. Measures include staff time savings, efficiency and transcription accuracy across five languages and the effect on client care, with the findings intended to inform a scalable and more inclusive model of home care. Reported positive impacts include staff better understanding client goals and needs through direct communication, rather than being filtered through a translator or family member, and strengthened relationships between staff and clients living at home.

Supporting independence without adding complexity

The goal is not to ask an older person to become a technology expert. It is to remove unnecessary complexities of using technology between the person and the people who matter to them. In Stergio’s case, the most meaningful feature may simply be that one touch can bring his daughter onto the screen. At other times, the translation function can help him communicate in Greek while an English-speaking visitor hears and reads the meaning.

Stergio beside his CareWindow, which displays the day, date and time in Greek when it is not being used for a call.

For home-care organisations, the same platform offers another way to maintain contact between visits and to support conversations when language is a barrier. It does not replace face-to-face care; rather, it can make that care easier to access and more inclusive.

“At EverYoung AI, we believe language should never be a barrier to receiving great care or staying connected with family and community. This collaboration with AMCS, CareWindow, ARIIA, Swinburne University and the families participating in the project has reminded us that the true value of aged care technology isn’t the AI itself; it’s giving older people more confidence, dignity and independence. Those real-world experiences continue to shape how we build our platform and reinforce the importance of designing technology around the people who use it.” - Jessie Wu, Co-founder & CEO, EverYoung AI

A model with wider potential

Australia’s older population includes people from hundreds of language backgrounds. For many, maintaining independence at home depends not only on receiving practical services, but also on being able to understand, be understood and stay socially connected.

CareWindow may be funded through My Aged Care’s Support at Home program as assistive technology, subject to individual eligibility and approval. Funding can potentially cover the device and the ongoing subscription that provides the communication service, maintenance, support, retraining and adaptation as needs change.

The AMCS project is building evidence about where this kind of technology is most useful, what supports clients, families and care teams need; and how translation can be integrated into ordinary home-care relationships. Its value will ultimately be measured not by the sophistication of the technology, but by moments like the one in Stergio’s kitchen: a daughter appearing on screen, a conversation beginning, and distance or language becoming a little less important.

Acknowledgements

The project was supported by an Aged Care Collaborative Accelerator Grant facilitated by Aged Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia (ARIIA), funded by the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing.

The authors acknowledge the contributions of Australian Multicultural Community Services (AMCS) and its staff and clients, the Living Lab team from the Centre for Design Innovation at the Swinburne University of Technology, the CareWindow team and the EverYoung AI team.

Get involved

Direct your family member or client to carewindow.com.au to view our weekly online demonstrations.