Telephones.

[barakta]

If you received a call at home or work where when you picked up the handset you got told the following in a computerised voice.

"Welcome to BT TextDirect please hold for connection"

Then a few seconds later...

"Connecting Typetalk"What would you do

Comments

[feanelwa]

Depends how awake I was. If I had just got out of bed I would probably hang up the first time, think "Oh shit, hang on, that might be somebody deaf" and then pick up if they rang again. If I was thinking properly I would probably stay on the line the first time. Although that's assuming I pick up the phone in the first place - I usually don't answer the landline because whoever it is, it won't be for me.

[barakta]

I usually ring back assuming that the person hasn't realised, or hung up as a reflex thing (Hell I have done it myself, hung up on people cos I couldn't hear - panic thing).

Most deaf people I know will ring back straight after, and again 5 or 10 mins later hoping to get someone else with clue.

Can I ask how you knew about typetalk, and if you have ever actually received a typetalk call?

I plan to educate as many people as I can to the existence of typetalk cos I think it is a good idea in principle even if some of the practice is annoyingly obtuse.

Natalya

[feanelwa]

Only through you talking about it. I've seen Typetalk numbers on various adverts and things but not often enough for it to register that this was a service offered to deaf people so they can use the phone. I haven't received a Typetalk call before.

[kimble]

The textphone numbers you see on advertising are for lines where a person with a textphone (also known as minicoms, as Minicom are the dominant textphone manufacturer) will (hopefully) answer your call directly. I.E. The typetalk relay service is not involved.

Sadly, more often than not, the textphone is "the weird keyboard phone thingy" that sits in the corner of the office that only $person_who_isn't_in_today knows how to use, so you end up calling the voice number via typetalk anyway.

[barakta]

yeh *stab*

Or in the case of the jobcentreplus they have /ONE/ textphone for the entire country operated by Annoying person1, and Can't Type 1. They have a 'leave a message' system whereby you wait about 9 days for a reply.

*stab*

That rant will come later when I write and kick off about it.

Natalya

[barakta]

Yay. I have educated someone and it made vague sense I hope

[kimble]

Insert rant about typetalk not inserting *any* identifying feature whatsoever to the caller-ID datastream[1].

[1] Which, given that there's a 1-byte 'call type' field[2] which is permanently[3] set to 'voice', is particularly frustrating.

[2] Okay, I accept that 99% of the caller ID hardware out there doesn't do anything with this field[4], but then 99% of the population aren't on the textphone end of typetalk calls. If the flag were set to indicate typetalk, textphones could use this data to inform the user[5] whether the call was voice of text.

[3] For small values of 'permanently'. It is used to flag calls originating from the phone network itself (eg. ringback or voicemail

[barakta]

You mean like Lorna[1] ringing the other day from work[2]?

She was ringing my dad to find out why my phone had a fax on it, and only then did it occur to her to text me to say 'wtf?'.

She now knows iff calling from random number to SMS me first so I'll pickup with voice ;p. Or to be fair make kim pick up 2nd attempt with voice.

[1]Lorna being my 20 yr old clonechild sister who is ignorant of sensible phone use policy.

[2]Ringing from work which comes up as UNRECOGNISED/WITHHELD as it is behind a PBX so I assume it is the Jobcentre or someone annoying. I have her normal numbers in the recognition database already.

[kimble]

Yes, exactly.

Point taken about the spaghetti-footnotes. It's a dreadful habit I've been failing to give up.

[barakta]

As habits go, it's kinda cute.

One of your best features I'd say.

Natalya