Ofcom wants better telephone services for disabled users

Phone users with hearing or speech impairments will benefit from new measures being proposed today by Ofcom.

The communications regulator wants modifications to upgrade telephony services such as text relay. These include simultaneous two-way speech with "live captions".

This would allow users to interject and remove the need to say 'go ahead' after each part of a conversation, improving the flow of conversation. It also wants the services to be compatible with current technology such as PCs and Macs.

Ofcom, which has now launched a consultation to discuss the proposals, has also developed plans for the introduction of video relay services for British Sign Language (BSL) users

Claudio Pollack, Ofcom consumer group director said: "People with disabilities can face barriers when using communications services. Although the wide availability and use of broadband and mobile text services has provided greater opportunities for disabled people to communicate, people with hearing and/or speech impairments continue to meet barriers when using voice telephony.

"The proposed measures outlined today aim to reduce these barriers by allowing conversations to flow naturally in real time."

Under the Universal Service Obligation, communications providers must provide ‘text relay' services for disabled consumers. This involves a relay assistant converting typed messages into speech and then back again, allowing consumers with hearing and/or speech impairments to communicate on the phone.

Research into these text relay services carried out by Ofcom found that although the current services are valuable to people with hearing and speech impairments, conversations using the current technology are not ‘natural'. They can be slow and difficult for users to use effectively, particularly for those with low literacy levels.

The regulator also wants to introduce video relay on a restricted basis which still needs to be established. The consultation into the review of relay services will close on 20 October 2011.