I am in complete agreement with paying for our VP usage. I’d not have a problem paying for my usage to cut down on operating costs for VRS companies. I also agree that if we all start paying for it like hearing people do with VoIP or “Magic Jack”, we will have more say in how things are run.

-J.J.

I meant 1989 not 1999.

I meant minimal use of TRS for conference calls, etc.

I apologize for my lousy typing and poor proof reading.

forgive an ignorant question – in ur blog entry you wrote:
Title II Part A covers public entities. So does that mean webinars, podcasts, etc should be covered under this?

By public entities you mean govt state and local only right? (schools, libraries, city hall, etc)
ADA Title II does not apply to Federal govt entities and doesnt cover non-govt affliliated public entities

thanks for your alerts

peace

patti

Hi Jeff,

I was not in Congress when they wrote those laws, but I think the Congress looks at anticipated costs when they draft and enact laws.

In 1999, a cost analysis of existing technologies (TTY relay) would have anticipated minimal use of VRS for conference calls and tele-seminars due to the limitations of the technology.

I wonder what the projected cost analysis would be if Congress were drafting the ADA today? I wonder if Congress would adopt a different balance between public paid (taxes) and employer paid (unfunded mandates) if they were writing the ADA and the Communications Act with VRS in mind?

I’m just sayin …

Funny you’ve brought that up – the part about adding costs. Convo is a company that employs nearly 95% deaf people without the call center interpreters, etc.

We’ve always told ourselves

- How do we save the costs and NOT use Convo Relay for our business purposes?

Deaf employees is the answer. We can video with each other and do things like that. So in a way, this is not a fair playing field for the hearing people. That’s how other companies are being run right now – it’s a bit heavy on the other side and there is hesitancy to hire deaf employees – because of added costs.

Robin

Now, for my final statement which isn’t going to win friends in the deaf and hard of hearing community. Until we deafies are willing to pay for the VPs and pay the costs of using Internet based phones, we’re not going to have the power of attaining true functional equivalence in telecommunications. I’m willing to pay for VPs with the same features that hearing people pay for their telephones with similar features; but it must be cost equivalent with funding to make up for the difference. I’m willing to pay for using my VP over the Internet at similar costs that hearing people pay for using their Internet telephone via Vonage, VoIP, Comcast, Verizon, etc. Until we attain functional equivalence in paying for the telecommunication devices and services, we will be at the mercy of the perception and thinking of the FCC, the hearies, and the telecommunications industry and VP manufacturers, who have little understanding of our needs.

I am sorry about your story. It looks as if you did all you could do. May I suggest you contact NAD about this? They like to know about these type of thing.

eyes open & thumbs up…

I feel I need to point out that FCC can indeed tell if the calls are from VRS staff or not.

I also need to point out that lot of calls that were held back “pending review” were by deaf/hoh outside of VRS providers. It is the frequency of conference calls by same person to the same phone number that are held back. As Jeff and others have pointed out, if a hearing person can make these calls number of times then why can’t deaf/hoh do the same?

I’ve said this a few times: “Oh what tangled web FCC has woven into with its relay regulations”. Be trapped with tangled web if you do, and be trapped with tangled web if you don’t.

eyes open & thumbs up…

There was never an issue with using tty relay with calling into conference calls, recorded information or anything that we are now arguing about for VRS. Nevermind that theres long distance rates associated with tty relay calls; like hearies deaf can use 800 numbers or calling plans to get free or very cheap minutes to make long distance calls. You could call as long as you wanted through tty relay and noone said boo.

Why? Because serving tty relay is much cheaper than the rate for VRS. People are freaking out about the sensitivities about the TRS fund and having a complete different dialogue abouit our civil right to accessble tecommunications. Got news for folks. I’ve talked with the FCC Commissioners and/or their staff and key Congressional members and/or their staff. I asked them all point blank, are you concerned about the growing size of the TRS Fund or about some people defrauding the TRS Fund with schemes to generate minutes. Each one of them replied that their objection was about the fraud, not the size of the TRS Fund. In fact, there is plenty of funds left in the TRS Fund due to excessive projections of VRS minutes. So lets focus on eliminating the fraud, not hurting our community by reducing our ability to use VRS as is our right.

We are still very early in our VRS experience. With video phone distribution and installations e are nowhere near the over hundreds of thousands of TTYS everywhere in America. Great number of people still dont have access to VPs and therefore VRS, including deaf blind, people with low income and cant afford internet, people with limited english proficiency, people in rural areas, and so on and on. Growing VRS is a good and right thing that needs to happen, no one needs to apologize or be concerned about their advocacy for more accessible telecommunications.

-Jeff Rosen

If you eliminate the selection of a default provider, and route calls to a random interpreter, you eliminate most of the fraud. Legitimate webinars and podcasts and conference calls won’t bankrupt the TRS fund.

What you can’t have is employees at a VRS provider being pulled off legitimate calls to create an income conference.