Deaf users campaign for video relay service

After a decade of having their needs neglected by telecoms providers, leaders of the UK's deaf community have written an open letter published in today's Times newspaper writes Jack Schofield for ZEDNET (11/05/12). 


They are campaigning for a universally-accessible video relay service of the sort that the Americans have operated successfully for the past 10 years. This would enable British Sign Language users to make and receive calls at any time, with no pre-booking, and at no additional cost over a normal phone contract.


The revised EU Electronic Communications Framework, rubber stamped by UK Government, sets out a legal requirement to ensure that disabled end-users enjoy access to telecommunications that are functionally equivalent to those enjoyed by other end-users. 


Unfortunately, the UK government appears to have done nothing substantial to meet this requirement for deaf users, simply handing off the problem to telecoms suppliers such as BT, O2, Vodafone, Three, Talk Talk, Virgin Media, Everything Everywhere and BSkyB.


The deaf organisations say they talked to communications minister Ed Vaizey, and that in November, he "repeatedly called on the telecommunications industry to work with the deaf community to find solutions which meet their communications needs". 


In their letter to The Times, they tell the telecoms providers: "You have failed to meet with us in open forum in response to the Minister’s request and your silence has been deeply disappointing," and that "Positive action by the industry is long overdue. You are delaying the introduction of modern relay services, and exacerbating the isolation and disadvantage which is faced by deaf people who are denied equal access to telecommunications."


The UK does have an experimental video relay service (VRS) called MyFriend, but it requires pre-booking of calls. However, this is a pilot project run from the University of Bristol with the financial backing of the EU. It may well close this summer when the EU funding runs out, and it seems extremely unlikely that the UK government would, if asked, stump up the trivial amount of money required to establish as a permanent service. 


In parliament, Vaizey said, as an aside: "I have been struck by the lack of engagement from business and telecoms companies, which is unbelievably frustrating. In that respect, we would, for example, like to have video technology that enables deaf people to use sign language, and I have told all the telecoms operators, 'Please come to me with a cost-effective solution,' but they have not done that. Eventually, of course, I will have to regulate through Ofcom to make them do that, but it would be so much simpler if they came to me and did it." (17 Jan 2012 : Column 245WH)


The organisations backing the campaign include the UK Council on Deafness, TAG (Telecommunications Action Group), the British Deaf Association, the National Deaf Children’s Society, Sense, the National Association of Deafened People, and the Royal Association for Deaf People, as well as companies and individuals.


This week is Deaf Awareness Week in the UK, and it continues until Sunday, 13 May.

Deaf community puts hope in new phone technology

Getting heard isn’t easy when you’re deaf writes Brent Wittmeier for the Edmonton Journal (20/02/12).

Changing a doctor’s appointment, ordering pizza, dialing 911: all are next to impossible without hearing. But Edmonton’s deaf community hopes Canada’s telecommunications regulator will change that.
Linda Cundy provides a concise summary of the debate over mandating the national adoption of a Video Relay Service — an interpreter and webcam phone system — after an 18-month trial for approximately 300 Alberta and British Columbia households ended last month, at a cost of over $3.2 million.
“(From) their perspective (the phone industry’s), it’s a financial hardship,” said Cundy, through interpreter Tiffany Goodkey. ”Our issue is accessibility.”
When she’s not consulting on behalf of deaf and hard of hearing students for Edmonton Public Schools, Cundy is secretary for the Alberta Association for the Deaf. And despite having never heard her own voice, she’s downright vocal when it comes to the Video Relay System.
Speak with Cundy and you’ll only hear taps and thumps, whispers and punctuations of her breath. But Cundy’s hands and face reveal a world of words, visual vocabulary summoned to combat the “oppression” experienced by Canadians who can’t hear.
There are no hard statistics for how many deaf Canadians are out there. The Canadian Association of the Deaf estimates one in ten have hearing loss. One-tenth of those people, or one per cent of the population, are estimated to be deaf. Based on figures from the 2011 census, that’s roughly 36,000 deaf Albertans.
“We can never win the number game,” Cundy said. “But our needs are extremely high. We don’t fit into the disabilities group, we don’t fit into the literacy and language minority group.”
The piloted video system allows deaf people access to real-time phone conversations via a webcam and monitor interface supplied by Utah-based Sorenson Communications. American Sign Language interpreters mediate phone calls: the deaf person uses video to communicate, the hearer relies on a regular headset. The technology has been available to deaf Americans since 2002.
Without the video system, deaf Canadians either have to rely on email and texting, or older and slower text-based phone technologies. At her home in Edmonton’s southern community of Magrath, Cundy demonstrates the process on a TTY teletype device — a phone-based contraption used since the ‘70s — as well as the modern, desktop computer equivalent, IP Relay. Both technologies require a keyboard, as well as an operator on the line to relay typed responses. It’s slower and often disjointed. And if all the operators are busy, conversations simply can’t happen.
Having lost access to the Video Relay System with the end of the pilot project, Cundy talks about problems with her IP Relay when she called a Chicago hotel to change a reservation.
“It was just left ringing for half an hour,” Cundy said. “There’s no way of communicating whether or not the operator’s not there. Are they closed, are they busy, is nobody available? It’s a small barrier, but a barrier nonetheless.”
The evolution of video and phone technology — and arguments for its regulation in Canada — has gone on for nearly a decade. Even before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission finally approved a trial in 2008, many deaf Canadians had already acquired the necessary equipment for calls south of the border. Cundy said some deaf Canadians even found ways to illegally access American call centres for domestic calls.
In 2003, Telus expressed openness to forays from the Alberta Association of the Deaf. But with a labour disruption and management changes, talks never progressed. The next year, the Canadian Association for the Deaf began fighting for the video technology at the national, regulatory level.
In 2008, the CRTC finally approved a trial of the Video Relay System, paid through deferral funds, which is money generated early in the decade from artificially high telecommunications prices mandated to encourage competition. Most of the $650-million surplus was later rebated or used to provide broadband to rural Canada, but a small percentage was set aside for future accessibility projects.
Beginning in July 2010, Telus offered the system to 311 households in Alberta and B.C., employing 150 sign-language interpreters at a cost of $2.03 million in deferral funds. A similar trial was offered by Bell Canada in Ontario and Quebec. The CRTC later allowed Telus to draw another $1.2 million — nearly half of its remaining deferral funds — to extend the trial an extra six months, ending Jan. 15.
Data, interviews and surveys from the trial are being compiled into reports to be submitted at the end of February. The CRTC has said it will make a decision about the feasibility of a national service next year.
Since January, the Canadian Association for the Deaf has gone into high gear defending and promoting the technology, launching an online petition and meeting with federal Conservative, Liberal, and NDP representatives to defend the system. Deaf organizations have encouraged letter writing to local politicians and rallies in support. At a January rally at Calgary’s CRTC office, 150 participants showed up. Another 100 showed up early February at a town hall meeting in a west Edmonton hotel. But Cundy said it takes extra effort, and hired translators, to get their message out.
Although some argue that existing IP Relay technology is sufficient, Cundy’s plea for the technology is linguistic. She refers to herself as bilingual — American Sign Language is her first language, English her second — and talks about the “long, long, drawn out history” of deaf people not given full access to the visual communication that allows their entry into language. But sign language has its own grammar, syntax and regional dialects; few deaf people can easily translate its visual ideas into English without loss of flow and sense.
“I’m comfortable in English and I’m comfortable in sign language, but not many deaf people are fluently bilingual,” Cundy said. “If you’re fluent in Spanish and forced to try to communicate in English, that’s not going to be successful. I’m fluent in ASL, but forced to type in English.”
Problems with text-based technology get amplified with other complications. Cundy is on a committee for deaf Albertan seniors in nursing homes, where Alzheimer’s and arthritis compound hearing problems to make communication even harder. After a lifetime of being left out of the conversation, Cundy says the video technology can open up a world of language for those people.
“We’re extremely advanced at this point,” Cundy said. “With all the advanced technology, we should be able to include and incorporate deaf people.”

Canadian deaf fear loss of video relay service

A deaf woman is campaigning in Canada to prevent closure of  a video relay service reports Shaheed Devji for CTV News (08/01/12).

For the last year and a half, Lisa Anderson-Kellett has been able to speak to her mother over the phone by sitting in front of a camera and communicating in sign language with an interpreter. The interpreter then verbalizes what she is saying to her mother, and also signs back to Anderson-Kellett what her loved one is saying.

"I could visualize her emotion, her excitement and facial expression through the interpretation, and she then also received that energy from me," Anderson-Kellett told CTV News with the help of an interpreter.

The U.S. has been using a similar system for about a decade, but Canada is still in a trial run commissioned by the CRTC that ends Jan. 15. The CRTC will then study the impact of the video relay system, or VRS, and decide within a year whether if should continue.

Anderson-Kellett is very concerned about the service ending and being forced to use a text-based system for making phone calls.

"To go back would be difficult; it's just not as easy," she said. "Even for the hearing person."

Ryan Ollis, who is also hearing impaired, fears he will lose autonomy after the testing phase ends next week.

"I think if VRS stops, then I'll be back to the old ways of depending a lot on hearing people for communicating," he said. "Having VRS makes me independent, and I much prefer that."

Anderson-Kellett says being able to speak to someone through sign language and face-to-face enhances her ability to have a conversation because she isn't forced to rely on other people.

"I consider it a basic right for equal access; a human rights issue for in terms of equality," she said. 

Founder of Rockville deaf services company gets nine years for fraud

Joseph and John Yeh guilty of conspiring to defraud the Federal Communications Commission’s Video Relay Service program writes Kevin James Shay for Maryland (USA) Community News Online (01/12/11).

A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced John T.C. Yeh, former CEO of Rockville deaf services business Viable, to nine years in prison and ordered him to pay restitution of $20 million for his role in a multimillion-dollar government fraud case.
His brother, former Viable vice president Joseph Yeh, received a prison sentence of 55 months on Wednesday and also was ordered by Judge Joel A. Pisano to pay $20 million in restitution.

In November 2009, John and Joseph Yeh were among 26 people nationwide to be indicted for conspiring to defraud the Federal Communications Commission’s Video Relay Service program, which helps deaf people communicate, by billing the government for millions of dollars in illegitimate calls. They pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud in October 2010.

John Yeh is eligible for a credit of his prison term when he was held during revocation of bail, according to records from U.S. District Court in Trenton, N.J.
Paul F. Kemp, a partner with Ethridge, Quinn, Kemp, McAuliffe, Rowan & Hartinger of Rockville who represented John Yeh, noted that prosecutors were asking for 15 years in prison and the maximum prison sentence the brothers faced was 20 years. He said Wednesday that he does not plan to appeal the sentencing.
“I wish [the prison term] had been shorter, but the judge tried to be fair,” Kemp said. “He was trying to find a middle ground.”

Stanley J. Reed, a principal with Lerch, Early and Brewer in Bethesda who represented Joseph Yeh, also said Wednesday he does not plan to appeal his client’s sentence.
“The judge did a superb job of balancing all of the issues and factors,” Reed said. “Joseph and John are grateful for the amazing outpouring of support they got from the community and the deaf community.”

About 100 people, many from the deaf community, traveled from across the country and even from overseas to support the Yehs at the sentencing hearing, Reed said.
About eight character witnesses testified on the Yehs’ behalf Wednesday, which likely helped their case, Kemp said. “We were grateful to the witnesses who came forward,” he said.

Pisano recommended to the Bureau of Prisons that the Yehs be incarcerated together in a federal prison camp in Cumberland, to be close to family members and be provided with all services they were entitled to under federal disability laws.

During the four-plus-hour hearing Wednesday, the Yehs were “remorseful, somber, scared and very focused on listening to everything the judge said,” Kemp said. The Yehs are not eligible for parole but can receive five days of “good time” per month credited against their prison terms, he said.

Pisano also sentenced both Yehs to three years of supervised release.
“It was a long journey to get here,” Kemp said. “We are glad that we had a thoughtful, considerate judge.”

Two other former Viable executives, Anthony Mowl and Donald Tropp, are among those who have pleaded guilty in the case. They are scheduled to be sentenced by Pisano on Dec. 14 in New Jersey, according to court documents.

John Yeh has long been involved with organizations that advocate for the deaf community, such as the National Asian Deaf Congress and National Deaf Business Institute. He was a trustee of Gallaudet University, a Washington, D.C., institution that specializes in education for deaf people, for more than a decade. Deaf Life, a monthly national magazine founded in 1987, honored him as its Deaf Person of the Year in 2008.

Yeh founded Viable in 2005 to develop and market real-time transcription text and video relay services to help deaf and other hard-of-hearing people communicate. Within three years, Viable had shot up from a handful of workers to almost 200 full- and part-time employees, while annual revenues exceeded $7 million.

But prosecutors said in court documents that Viable charged the government for millions of dollars in illegitimate, or “run,” calls.

A previous business that John Yeh formed, software engineering and integration company Integrated Microcomputer Systems, in Rockville with the help of his brothers, reached $40 million in revenue in 1995 before he sold it in 1996.

Give deaf people the chance to use video relay service

Deaf people need a video relay phone service that translates sign language into speech – but not for just half an hour a month writes Charlie Swinbourne for The Guardian (02/11/11).

In July, Ofcom published a review of relay services, proposing the introduction of a video service that would enable phone calls in sign language. Deaf people would sign into a device incorporating a video camera, with an interpreter in a remote location translating their signs into speech.

On the surface, Ofcom's consultation offers a massive improvement to deaf people's lives. In the UK, there are estimated to be between 50,000 and 70,000 people who use British Sign Language as their primary form of communication. BSL has a different structure, grammar and syntax to English, with an emphasis on body language, facial expressions, and gestures.

Because of this, deaf people who use sign language as their first language can find it harder to use text-relay services which depend on a high level of written English (where they type on a keyboard, with an operator voicing their words to a hearing person on the other end of the phone line). The VRS Today campaign estimates that sign language users would be able to use video relay services four times faster than text relay.

But there's one catch. While in America, deaf people (who have had the service since 2002) can make phone calls on an unrestricted basis, at any time of day, any day of the week, Ofcom has proposed that in Britain, deaf people will be given a quota allowing them to make just 30 minutes of calls a month. Worse, the service will only be available between 9am and 5pm on weekdays.

Imagine being restricted to 30 minutes a month – would that be enough time to organise your life, speak to friends and family, your work or your utility company? What if there's a call you need to make in the evening? What happens if a company puts you on hold? Or if you haven't finished your call as your time runs out? Then, even if a deaf person has a great call and finds the service really useful, they are left waiting for a month for the next chance to use it.

If there is a need for a video relay service for deaf people – and Ofcom agrees there is – then making it available in such a limited way makes little sense. It would make it hard for deaf people to get into the habit of using it, and would make using video relay a frustrating experience, which would in turn have a knock-on effect on its take-up by the deaf people it is aimed at. Thirty minutes a month amounts to a half measure, giving with one hand while taking away with the other.

Deaf organisations, including groups specifically focused on telecommunications like TAG and DAART have campaigned for years for improvements to relay services (with improvements to text relay services being high on the agenda as well as video relay). One major irony is that many deaf people (including my mother) have for years paid for packages incorporating free voice minutes on both mobile phones and landlines which, due to their deafness, they cannot use.

The UK telecommunications industry was worth £40bn in 2009, while Ofcom's proposals estimate that offering deaf people an unrestricted video relay service – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — would cost just over £40m. Ofcom's proposals were described as "outrageous and highly unacceptable" byDavid Buxton, chief executive of the British Deaf Association.

The deadline for responses to Ofcom's consultation passed last month. Just days earlier, a petition with more than 2,500 signatures, supported by nearly every major deaf charity in the UK, was delivered to Downing Street calling for unrestricted access to video relay. That same day, a roundtable meeting was held between deaf organisations, telecommunications companies and the government, including Ed Vaizey, the communications minister. Deaf people now face an anxious three-month wait before finding out whether they will have the same freedom to use the telephone as their hearing counterparts.

Ironically, in advance of Ofcom's decision, a pilot project part funded by the European Commission called myFriend is offering deaf people the chance to try out video relay services as part of a concept calledTotal Conversation. From 1 November, deaf people who take part will be able to make phone calls using a BSL interpreter for up to four hours a day. However, when the pilot ends in June 2012, deaf people face going from over 100 hours of potential use a month, to a quota of just half an hour a month if Ofcom's current proposals remain unchanged. That's a reduction of over 99.5%.

It's no exaggeration to say that introducing video relay with huge limitations would mean that a massive opportunity to transform sign language users' lives for the better could be squandered. The communications industry has seen huge technological advances in the last decade, but sign language users have been left trailing far behind. Equality should mean freedom, choice, and independence, and only offering video relay services without imposing a harsh time limit can truly offer that to deaf people.

SignVideo available at constituency office

Mike Crockart MP for Edinburgh West is the first elected member in the UK to make Deaf Action’s SignVideo available at his constituency office, report STV TV Edinburgh (12/10/11).

The service provided through Deaf Action in collaboration with SignVideo, means that Deaf BSL constituents are able to visit Mike to discuss their concerns without having to worry about a language barrier. The latest technology means that a translator joins the meeting via a webcam and provides simultaneous translation.

The online interpreting service for deaf people will provide instant access to experienced SASLI registered BSL/English interpreters using the most advanced technology in the field.
Commenting Mr Crockart said:

“Throughout the UK there is a shortage of British Sign Language/English interpreters; this is a particular problem throughout Scotland with the ratio of qualified interpreters to sign language users estimated at around 1 interpreter for every 200 sign language users.
“This shortage means that interpreters are booked up in advance and many interpreters are unable to accept bookings at short notice. Commonly, sign language interpreters are booked for a minimum of two hours, even for an appointment that may only last 15 minutes. Clearly, this booking process is not very convenient for deaf users of the service.
“This technology will revolutionise the way that I can communicate with Deaf BSL constituents. I hope other elected representatives across Scotland will think about adopting SignVideo.”