Captioned telephone...

Last February, I was in New York City for a weekend. To get some much needed respite from my caregiver duties and to see some blogfriends who I haven't seen in a long long time.

Anyhow, on a Saturday morning, I happened to watch TV and waiting for the weather forecast to come up. In the meantime, I saw ads for NY Relay.

To those not familiar, a traditional "relay" service is a way for deaf and hard of hearing people to communicate with the outside world, as well to receive calls. They have a device which goes to the phone. Pretty much a terminal, with a tiny screen and a keyboard. That device is called a TTY, or sometimes TDD (Telecom Device for the Deaf)

Incoming calls must go to a relay service, and the person talks voice with an operator. The operator in turn will call the other party, with the TTY. So, she will "relay" the voice conversion over the TTY device, and for the deaf person, she can type on the keyboard, which will be seen by the operator, which in turn will "relay" that text voice to the talking party.

There are variations of this. Such as IP Relay, which is the same idea, but over the internet, and there is also VRS (Video Relay Service) like Sorenson VRS which sadly is available *only* in the US, which, instead of relaying words, they relay *Sign Language* to spoken English. The video portion goes over the internet, and voice over traditional phone lines. I saw that in action, and I was absolutely floored! We should have that in Canada. Again, that's something our government doesn't see the need, but the the Americans do. (End of mini-rant here. :) )

But all these services operate the same basic way: If you want to reach a deaf / hard of hearing person, you have to call a special phone number *first*, in order to reach an operator. Ditto the other way around, for a deaf person to call an hearing person.

So I was genuinely curious at NY Relay's ad for... the Captioned Telephone (watch their video).

At first, I was thinking of voice recognition, which is a nightmare for computers to do, as anyone can notice that when calling some voice automated services like 411 directory assistance... with *very* varying success. :)

No, there's no voice recognition circuitry.

It's still a phone with a screen, and as the ad goes on, you dial *directly* the person you want to reach, as you would do with a normal call, and talk normally. Every word you say are captioned. I was wondering how.

This would be great for my dad who is almost completely deaf, and even for me, while I'm not deaf nor hard of hearing, but sounds do not translate well into "words" by my brain. Much like TV with closed-captioning was always on, I would love to listen to a conversation to get the gist of it, while reading the captioning on a screen.

I am also thinking of a few friends which this phone would be a wonderful gift. It would be great for them to call me directly and vice-versa. :) No more operators to dial in first!

There is a gotcha. Or even two, from a Canadian perspective.

The "Captioned Telephone" does two things. You call directly the other party so there's the convenience of a traditional phone call... but the phone also calls the relay service.

It shifts the paradigm of a relay service. The operator is no longer the person in the middle, relaying text to one side and voice the other side. The operator is set aside, and he just type everything that is heard on the line. In effect, this is the "closed captioning" like on TV, except that it's done over the phone.

I suspect there must be delays. First, you don't get an operator instantly, and throughout a lively conversation, I suspect the operator may fall behind, just like closed-captioning of live events, on TV. :)

The additional gotcha is that just like ip-relay, ditto for VRS, the "Captioned Telephone" works... only in the US, as always. So it's useless in Canada.

Anyway, there's a good idea. I wonder how it's going to evolve, over the time.

I suspect that at some point, phones will be equipped of voice recognition, which a keyboard could also be plugged in. Such an universal device would work every way possible, between deaf, hard of hearing and hearing people.

That said, if everyone knew Sign Language, the use of video would make the telephone obsolete. :)

Anyway, just sharing my joy of seeing technology helping people. In this case, to break the communication barrier. This is something that will always be of great interest to me (even more so here, since I have some vested interests, as a functionally hard of hearing person. :) )

Cheers!

-E