Many solutions have come forth for accessing relay from your wireless pager – but the majority have all been about making calls to relay from the pager – and those that did help you get calls – just were too complicated to explain to hearing people. It just wasn’t as simple as memorizing a phone number and dialing that number to reach you. Well, you will no longer be frustrated by this “imbalance” in wireless relay offerings after you hear about this new advance in relay technology!
At last weekend’s Deaf Expo West [1], MCI announced a new addition to their IP-Relay [2] family that will allow a hearing person to contact a deaf person using a personalized phone number. The days of having to explain relay, or explain how to use the special phone number along with a username, or so forth are over. Using the new My IP Relay Number [3] service from MCI, deaf AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) [4] users can receive relay calls via AIM. When you register [5] for a free My IP Relay Number, you will get assigned a free phone number that corresponds to the city and state that you specify when you register. You will be able to give out this personal phone number to hearing people and receive calls from them via AIM. MCI plans to roll out the capability to leave messages via email in “early December 2004.” [6] This free service will make it truly possible for deaf people to easily send and receive calls from hearing people wirelessly via their Sidekick or other AIM enabled device! Pah!
[1] http://www.deafexpo.com/west/
[2] http://www.ip-relay.com/
[3] http://www.ip-relay.com/number_info.htm
[4] http://www.aim.com/
[5] http://www.ip-relay.com/myiprelaynumber/ronRegister.jsp
[6] http://www.ip-relay.com/myiprelay_faq.htm
Have anyone tried using Blackberry 7510 with TTY ? How it is rating ? Compare with Sidekick II ? My corporation wont get me a SK II, only suppliers is from Nextel.