National Association of the Deaf

The NAD, with the Hearing Loss Association of America and other consumer advocacy groups, advocates for nationwide captioned telephone service and opposes requirements that relay service communication assistants announce their presence on relay calls or disclose that a person is deaf or hard of hearing.

Captioned Telephone Service
A captioned telephone is a special telephone that has a built-in screen to display in text (captions) everything the other person on the call says. Calls made to or from a captioned telephone can be connected to a relay service called Captioned Telephone Service (CTS). The CTS communications assistant (CA), a specially trained operator, hears the person you want to talk to. The CA repeats or re-voices what that person says and speech recognition technology automatically transcribes the CA’s spoken words into text (captions) which is displayed on the captioned telephone. CTS appeals to people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or late-deafened who communicate by speaking, who want to hear what the other person is saying as much as possible, but who may have difficulty understanding everything the other person says.  Captioned telephones and CTS are available in almost every state. However, many states limit on the number of new CTS users they accept per month, how people can obtain or purchase a captioned telephone, and other limitations, such as where those captioned telephones can be used. For more information about CTS, visit the NAD website on CTS.

Petition for Nationwide CTS
In 2005, the NAD, with other consumer advocacy groups, filed a Petition for Rulemaking with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to require CTS nationwide. Hundreds of people wrote to the FCC in support of our request. In 2007, the FCC said that CTS will reach people who have not been served well by other relay service options, just like video relay service has achieved greater functional equivalence for people who use American Sign Language. The FCC was right. The FCC also said it would, but has not yet addressed whether CTS should be a required relay service.

California Requires Announcement on CTS Relay Calls
In addition to various state restrictions on the availability of captioned telephones and CTS, the lack of a national mandate, oversight, and minimum standards has also resulted in an intrusive state policy and practice.

In 2009, California added a requirement (effective July 2010) for all CTS providers to inform all parties to a CTS call, by text and voice messages, about the “participation” of a CTS CA on every CTS call with a California participant. The basis for this provision is California’s privacy protections, including prohibitions against the wiretapping, eavesdropping, monitoring, and recording without the consent of every person participating on the telephone call. The intent of these state laws is to curb illegal invasion of privacy. The requirement for CTS CAs to announce their presence on California CTS calls does not advance the purpose of California privacy laws. Instead, the requirement violates the right to privacy of CTS users. The requirement results in the CA disclosing, unnecessarily, that a person is deaf or hard of hearing.

This invasive requirement is only for California CTS users, and not users of other relay services. California gives users of other types of relay services the option of not announcing that their calls are being made through a relay service, and prohibits CAs from informing called parties that the caller has a speech or hearing disability unless the caller asks the CA to do so. To require CAs to announce their presence conflicts with one of the most important contributions that CTS has made to the ADA’s promise of functional equivalency – the complete transparency of the CA throughout the call. 

In March 2009, we expressed our strong opposition to the new requirement for CAs to announce their presence on CTS calls. We asked California to remove the requirement. See Appendix B of the Petition for Clarification and Declaratory Ruling, discussed further below, Request for Intervention and Modification. We received no official response to our request.

Renewed Efforts to Require Nationwide CTS and Transparency
In June 2009, we filed a Supplement to the 2005 Petition. The Supplement provides the FCC with updated information about CTS, including the new California requirement to announce the presence of CAs on CTS relay calls. Finally, in September 2009, the California Attorney General issued an Opinion upholding the requirement for CAs to announce their presence on CTS calls. This offensive provision will go into effect in July 2010.

So, in March 2010, we filed a Petition for Clarification and Declaratory Ruling on Communications Assistant Transparency. We requested that the FCC to clarify and declare that a state may not require CAs to announce their presence on CTS relay calls. This principle should apply for any form of relay service calls. If necessary, we asked the FCC to make this a new rule. We also asked the FCC to rule that the California requirement violates the ADA mandate for relay services to be functionally equivalent to telephone services.

Since then, we have met with FCC Commissioners’ offices and representatives of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, to discuss the 2005 Petition and the 2009 Supplement requesting an FCC mandate for nationwide CTS, and the Petition for Clarification and Declaratory Ruling for CA transparency. We continue to urge the FCC to grant our Petitions for nationwide CTS and CA transparency.

What Consumers Can Do
File a Comment with the FCC. Type 03-123 in the first box marked “Proceeding Number,” type your name and contact information, and tell the FCC that you support nationwide CTS and CA transparency. Tell the FCC:

• I support the 2005 Petition and the 2009 Supplement requesting an FCC mandate for nationwide Captioned Telephone Service.
• I support the Petition for Clarification and Declaratory Ruling for Communication Assistant Transparency.