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

[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).

[4] I'm a geek, I build my own Caller ID system that parses this field.

[5] Okay, so a deaf user wouldn't be able to answer a voice call anyway, but in a household with both hearing and deaf users this would be very useful, as nothing confuses hearing people more than having their voice call answered by a textphone (which makes retero modem noises, and is often assumed to be a fax machine and therefore a wrong number).

[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