Deaf people feel silenced by telecoms
Deaf organisations have come together to launch a campaign to improve telecoms services for deaf people by demanding better services at affordable prices.
TAG, an advocacy group which represents all the main UK deaf organisations, is taking its case direct to Parliament. As part of the ‘Bringing Deaf Telecoms into the 21st Century’ campaign, TAG called on the Government and telecoms regulator Ofcom to put deaf people on to an equal footing with hearing people in their use of the telephone.
Chairman Ruth Myers said that it is pivotal that deaf people have easy and affordable access to the telephone. She said the RNID Typetalk, a text relay service from the 1990s, has not been updated because there is no incentive or pressure from the government to do so.
“It’s essential that telephone services for deaf people keep pace with technology – and are available at a fair price," she added.
Deaf people are left with even fewer options since captioned telephony, which uses speech recognition technology to convert an operator's voice into text, closed in December for funding reasons.
