Speech-to-Speech
A free national telephone relay service
for people with speech disabilities
People with speech disabilities who have trouble taking on the telephone deaf community leader. Mr. Sonnenstral says:
“For clarification, I believe about 25% of 911 calls tend to be "silent"calls. For example, should there be a fire, one would just dial 911 and leave the room. One with a heart attack wouldn’t be able to talk on the phone after dialing 911. One may dial 911 without talking should there be an intruder in the house.
All call takers are trained to listen to the sounds and determine which service would be dispatched. Cracking sounds may indicate fire then fire engines. Screaming or threatening voices may indicate police. Gasping for air may indicate ambulances.
What DOJ did in early 1990s when they developed mandatory guidelines as to include TTYs as part of the silent call procedure. No cracking, threatening gasping sounds then use TTY which must be in front of each call-taker.
Since TTY calls are minimal, the call-takers tend to lose the passion to remain alert or trained to use TTYs. To make things even worse, deaf people tend to be nice enough to be satisfied with ANY form of response rather than appropriate response.
We need to train deaf people to be more assertive by going thru litigation to prod 911 personnel to comply with the federal law. Nice guys finish last.”