It has really improved the quality of life for the deaf community.” “It’s a real number,” he said. “Anyone can call me directly on my cell phone. Emmons said it’s a big deal for someone who is deaf to be able to use a regular phone number and to be able to have the freedom to communicate from anywhere.
Outside of the home, mobile apps extend the experience for group video chats and for interpreter-assisted calls on the go.
VRS not only allows for faster messaging, but for emotions and expressions to be communicated as well through an American Sign Language interpreter. “It wasn’t that fluid or fast,” he said. “We felt like foreigners unable to speak our native language.” VRS is the video equivalent of that, with a live interpreter speeding up what used to be a more cumbersome process.Įric Emmons, a 22-year Austin resident who’s worked for Sorenson for 14 years, says that for deaf users such as himself, TTY made for very long phone conversations. But the gadget, which combines a high-def video camera, a remote control and an Internet gateway that uses a customer’s home Internet, is also a big step beyond traditional TTY systems. Those systems allowed deaf callers to place messages that were typed in through a traditional phone line (this was pre smart-phone texting) to another TTY unit or read aloud by an interpreter. The ntouch VP2 is an evolution of several technologies that many of us take for granted: video chatting similar to Skype or Facetime, apps that can do call transfers and call forwarding, voice mail and making phone calls via Bluetooth. While Sorenson competes with other companies for those government dollars, its customers don’t pay anything to have its devices installed in their homes. Telecommunications Relay Service Fund as mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Salt Lake City-based company that makes the gadget and supporting apps, which allow deaf users to do group video chats and interpreter-assisted phone calls through their smart phone, computer or HDTV via the Internet, wasn’t urging attendees to rush to Best Buy or to pay for the new gadget through Sorenson’s website.ĭistribution of the ntouch VP2, the fourth-generation of a product the company has been making for more than a decade, is federally funded by the U.S. The product preview, in the guise of a celebration (similar events have taken place in Los Angeles, Rochester, N.y., and Washington D.C.), was not exactly a sales pitch. On Tuesday night, in the lobby of Austin’s Topfer Theatre on South Lamar, about 350 members of Austin’s deaf community gathered to learn about a new device being offered from Sorenson Communications, a video-relay device called the ntouch VP2.
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