Leading COAT Affiliates Support Internet-Enabled Relay for People with Speech Disabilities

On October 19, 2011, nine COAT affiliates filed a petition at the FCC that would modernize the Speech-to-Speech (STS) form of relay services used by people with speech disabilities. These affiliates included Speech Communication Assistance By Telephone, Inc. (SCT), the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), Telecommunications for the Deaf & Hard of Hearing (TDI), Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF), National Association of the Deaf (NAD), Washington State Communications Access Project (Wash-CAP), Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN), TecAccess and SSB BART Group. 

The petition asked the FCC for a rulemaking on Video Assisted STS (“VID-STS”) that could provide better functional equivalence of phone calls for people with severe speech disabilities. VID-STS would be a convergence of traditional Speech-to-Speech (STS) and the Internet-enabled form of relay known as Video Relay Service or VRS.

VRS is used by sign language users however, a language that most people with speech disabilities do not learn and many cannot learn due to concomitant physical disabilities. VID-STS would work similarly to VRS in that the consumer with a severe speech disability would have installed a high quality camera and microphone on his/her computer and, by means of a broadband Internet connection, would call a Communications Assistant (CA) with enhanced STS training and who has a video connection.  Such calls would work the same as traditional STS calls except that the VID-STS CA would becommunicating with the user over the Internet with video input from a user who is not a sign language user. That CA or operator (“VID-STS CA”) would connect, place and voice telephone calls for the user, similar to the current process for STS, but with the addition of the video channel.

During these calls, the VID-STS CA would watch the user’s face and any available seen body parts or indicators, in addition to listening to the user’s voice. For people with speech disabilities location, orientation and movement of body, body parts and head, facial expression and other non-manual indicators, including some sound, can also add meaning that is translatable by the CA into clear speech that can be voiced to the person called.

The initiative is generally supported by many potential users, including family members and caregivers of people with speech disabilities, allied medical professionals, and some government utility and telephone industry individuals.   A copy of the petition is attached below.