A LONG TIME COMING: "Japan plans phone relay service for those with impaired hearing, catching up with rest of G7"

From The Japan Times, June 27, 2019 (Thanks to SM for the heads-up via his FB post).

The government plans to launch a telephone relay service to enable people with hearing disabilities to chat online via sign language, government officials said Thursday.

Japan will be the last of the Group of Seven advanced countries to launch such a service for people who cannot make voice calls and aims to start the service within a few years, the officials said.

It will be available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year at a cost similar to voice calls.

There are approximately 350,000 people nationwide with hearing difficulties or speech disorders.

The plan will be included in a draft report to be compiled in the near future by a joint working group of the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry and the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, the officials added.

To fund the service, the government plans to impose special fees on phone users.

With the new service, customers will contact an operator via a website equipped with a video-calling function. The operator will help them communicate simultaneously with people without hearing disabilities via sign language or by speaking text messages out loud, the officials said.

It is expected that people with hearing impairments will be able to talk with a much wider range of people, which would, for example, allow them to make restaurant reservations and contact providers of public services.

Eventually, the service will facilitate emergency calls and let those without hearing impairments make calls to those with hearing disabilities.

Unlike free communication applications, the caller and receiver will not need to use the same service, the officials said.

The Nippon Foundation and other groups and firms have been offering similar services on a limited scale.

The trial service provided by the Nippon Foundation has almost 10,000 registered users but isn’t usable early in the morning or late at night. Emergency calls are also not allowed, according to the foundation.

Even after the government starts offering the service, “It needs to publicize the service to many people, including those without hearing difficulties,” a Nippon Foundation official said.

Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/06/27/national/japan-plans-phone-relay-service-impaired-hearing-catching-rest-g7/?fbclid=IwAR04mowjIis1KKb3NNQ619qrFzhfL_Nw4Q-zEF8r6tYx81ItRJKJ8tDWHCw#.XRw3VdMzbUI

"Relay services give hearing-impaired taste of telephone access"

Text and photo from The Japan Times, 7/10/16.

Kentaro Hayase, who was born with impaired hearing, could not understand what it was like to communicate over the phone.

The Yokohama cram school operator for children with hearing difficulties would have a family member call on his behalf when necessary.

But after learning of sign-language interpreters who offer phone relay services, Hayase, 43, has been making four to five calls per week for business or other purposes, including restaurant reservations.

“I didn’t quite appreciate what it was like to make a phone call,” he said.

But now that he has experienced real-time communications, “My world has expanded.

“When I’m refused something, I can tell whether it’s a one hundred percent ‘no’ or if there is room for negotiation,” he said of the benefits of speaking with someone over the phone.

Using smartphones or computers, Hayase and others like him access sign-language interpreters via video-enabled internet phone or messaging platforms, such as Skype and Line. The interpreters then contact the intended parties, telling them they are calling on behalf of a hearing-impaired person.

Words spoken at the other end of the line are fed back to the caller by way of sign language or text.

Many people with disabilities apparently have not made use of the service yet, saying email and faxes do the job. But Hayase said they are missing out on the benefits of the service.

“People aren’t aware of the necessity of the phone unless they use it,” he said. “I hope it will be made easily accessible to everyone.”

Similar relay services are offered in more than 20 other countries in Asia, Europe and the Americas.

In Japan, the nonprofit Nippon Foundation is running a free prototype service that has around 3,600 registered users, contracting work to six companies offering telephone operators and sign-language services. Other companies are offering paid services.

The phone relay service makes everyday activities easier, from doctor’s appointments and restaurant reservations to rescheduling parcel deliveries.

Right after powerful earthquakes of magnitude 6.5 and 7.3 struck Kumamoto Prefecture in April, the phone relay service was used to confirm the safety of people with hearing disabilities or to help such people requesting advice.

After accumulating stress from their prolonged stays at the shelters, some hearing-impaired people even made video calls to the operators just because they wanted to chat in sign language, according to a center that supports the hearing-impaired in the city of Kumamoto.

While the cost of sign-language interpretation abroad is often borne by governments or even phone carriers, Japan needs to address the cost issue as well as other challenges, including how to secure telephone operators and sign-language proponents, to ensure round-the-clock services.

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has signaled that it is considering earmarking appropriations to tackle some of these issues in the next fiscal budget. But promoting the relay service does not appear to be a high priority at the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, which oversees information technology.

Hiroyuki Miura, president of PLUSVoice, a Sendai-based company that has run a phone relay service for more than 10 years, expects demand to rise in the coming years.

He noted increased awareness of the need for society to engage people with disabilities after the April enforcement of a law aimed at eliminating discrimination against the disabled, and in the run-up to the 2020 Paralympics that Tokyo is hosting along with the Summer Games.

Source: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/07/10/national/social-issues/relay-services-give-hearing-impaired-taste-telephone-access/