San Francisco Chronicle:

For Melvin Patterson, who has been completely deaf since he was a toddler, communication is a visual experience.

In the past, conducting a conversation using traditional nonvisual telecommunications tools like telephones and pagers was frustrating. Text messages or sign language conversations on jittery Web video screens were a pale substitute for a face-to-face exchange.

But that changed dramatically when Patterson tried iChat AV, new videoconferencing software, and iSight, a new Web camera, which Apple Computer Inc. introduced during the summer.

"When my girlfriend and I were able to talk to each other using iChat with iSight, I can't describe the feeling I had,'' the Chicago film school student said in an e-mail to The Chronicle. "I'm sure it is the same feeling people had long ago when the telephone was invented, being able to hear someone's voice with all their inflections from a distance."

Unlike any other technology he had seen, Patterson, 31, said the iChat AV software produced video that was clear enough to see another person's fingers and hand movements, a crucial element in communicating in American Sign Language.

My brother's son, here in front of the iChat / iSight video, is not deaf. However, he is speaking a different kind of sign language with his Uncle in Germany. This language of love is free. It's real-time. And it's leading this family to sell all their long-distance company stocks, pronto.

Since we're already Mac people, we're making the investment in the Web camera and software for us and the rest of our family. With this new technology, we have clearly entered a new era of communication.

~Jennifer