Deaf lobby calls for phone service funding

A consortium of organisations campaigning to improve funding for technologies that allow deaf people to use the telephone is taking its case direct to Parliament.

As part of the ‘Bringing Deaf Telecoms into the 21st Century’ campaign, TAG is holding a reception for MPs at Portcullis House, Westminster, tonight.

TAG, which represents all the main UK deaf organisations concerned with telecommunications and broadcasting, is not trying to reinvent the wheel.

It said many of the technologies deaf people need to use telephone services already exist. But many services using these have folded because of lack of funding or because deaf people have been unable to afford them.

Captel, the only captioned relay telephony, which was available in the UK from 2002 to 2007, was closed in December 2007 for funding reasons. Video relay services run by RNID and the BDA closed last year, leaving only two such services in the UK: Significan’t’s Signvideo service and a fledgling service in Scotland.

Ruth Myers, chairman of TAG, said: “Much better access has been shown to be within grasp, but most of the services that deliver it have folded because they are too expensive for deaf individuals.”

She went on to say that it was essential that telephone services for deaf people keep pace with technology and were available at a fair price.

“With modernised services such as using a PC to access the relay service, captioned telephony and video relay, many deaf people could have much faster and more fluent communications, thus bringing them closer to equality in education, training, the workplace and as consumers and citizens.”

TAG also pointed out that although the RNID’s Typetalk service is an invaluable service, there is no incentive for BT, which funds this initiative, to modernise it.

At the parliamentary reception, hosted by The Rt Hon Malcolm Bruce MP, TAG will reiterate its call to Government and Ofcom to put deaf people on an equal footing with hearing people in their use of the telephone. It hopes that the issues will soon also be aired in the House of Commons.

Malcolm Bruce MP, who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on Deafness, said: “Four decades after telephones became commonplace in British households, many deaf people still struggle to use the telephone network and some cannot use it at all.

“Deaf people are bereft of key telephone services that could help them gain social, educational and professional equality with the rest of society.”