December 22, 2005
Real-time texting for deaf people
Software has been developed which enables deaf people to have real-time text conversations using a mobile phone, writes BBC news.
But The Royal National Institute for Deaf people , the charity that has created the service, says some mobile operators have yet to fulfil a legal obligation to make their services accessible. Only Vodafone has a relay service that uses the technology.
Landline users can already make such calls using the Typetalk facility.
Relay services allow a deaf person to make and receive a call via an operator, who turns the voice part of the conversation into text and relays the deaf person's text replies into speech. The application can be used on any modern mobile handset, and allows character by character text communication of unlimited duration.
Like Vodafone customers, BT Mobile subscribers already have access to a text relay service which uses the RNID's technology.
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