Better phone access for the deaf
Politicians in the UK are being lobbied to provide greater access to technology which can help the deaf make phone calls.
A consortium, known as TAG, which is made up of organisations including RNID, the British Deaf Association, Hearing Concern and Sense organised a mass lobby to make politicians think about how technology which will help deaf people use the telephone, can actually be made available. TAG is also calling on the Government to provide funding to give deaf people access to this technology.
There are a number of ways that technology can help deaf people use the telephone including captioned telephony, video relay and text relay. Read more about this here.
Comments
This is a really interesting issue. The kinds of technology that TAG are lobbying for would give deaf children more access to communication with their friends.
In my opinion, text phones or text relay are not always the best ways for deaf young people to communicate with each other and hearing peers, as the language that is used is written English. For BSL users or signers, this may not be the best way to communicate, it may be better if they can communicate using sign.
I would be really interested to find out about the outcomes from the lobbying on 3rd April, any news yet?
Posted by: Angela Deckett | April 23, 2008 05:37 PM