ADA25: #22 of 25 -- Preservation of Relay Services (02:27)

What does the Preservation of Relay Services have to do with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)? Find out from NAD Attorney Tawny Holmes. View the entire #ADA25 series at www.nad.org/ADA25.

Video begins with an off white vintage background. Three black and white photos appear. First photo shows a group of people marching, one holds a NAD poster. Second photo shows another group of people marching, one holds a poster "We Shall Overcome." Third photo shows President Bush signing the Americans with Disabilities Act. Text appears "ADA25 -- Americans with Disabilities Act". Video flashes to white then to Tawny Holmes inside NAD Headquarters. On bottom left corner, "#ADA25" appears as a light watermark. On bottom right corner, the NAD logo appears, also as a light watermark. 

TAWNY: Title IV of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) helped implement the national relay program that provides equal telephone access for deaf and hard of hearing people. The relay program first started with text relay for TTYs and then with technology advancements and the advent of the Internet, we now have access to various relay services! After TTY relay came Video Relay Services (VRS), IP-Relay, and captioned telephones. The deaf and hard of hearing community appreciates the various and innovative technologies that improve relay services. However, it is important to preserve and promote the quality of relay services. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) monitors the quality of relay services in the US by overseeing several areas: how much is paid per minute for each relay service, performance standards and expectations, , appropriate competition among all relay service companies, and the quality and functional equivalence of telecommunications services. While we may be pleased with relay services today, it is important to continue to improve the relay program and avoid rate cuts that impair such improvements. Rate cuts may affect the quality of relay services. We encourage the FCC to establish quality standards first before making any further rate cuts. This requires the ability to measure quality and make informed decisions about the relay program. Part of the NAD's initiative to enhance the quality of relay services includes faster response time, the use of Certified Deaf Interpreters (CDI), the use of skill-based routing (which means a caller can connect to a specially skilled interpreter who can interpret a legal phone call or a medical phone call), and finally interoperability between videophones or any kind of relay services. We use relay services for important phone calls like a job interview or for personal use, quality relay services affect the quality of our lives in the work place or even on a social level. All of us must work together to continue to preserve and improve all relay services.

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