The Hear Daily » Accessibility

Sprint’s CapTel supports the Hearing Impaired

Samantha — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:00:46 +0000

Sprint has a live captioning service available for hard of hearing people whom struggle to hear conversations on the telephone.

Here’s the gist: if you need to make a call, you log in to the CapTel website (once you are registered), input your own telephone number and the number you want to call. In a second, your phone will ring and shortly thereafter, the number you are calling will ring. As the conversation takes place, captions appear on your your computer screen - in the window you just input your numbers into.

If you want to receive a call, your caller calls a special number you have been assigned and enter your telephone number. Moments later, your phone will ring, and the conversation will be captioned on your computer. This seems more complicated than it really is. Do it once and it’s a cinch.

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Read your Voicemail

Samantha — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:45:29 +0000

Every hard of hearing person struggles on the phone at some point. Some phones are better than others, some people speak better than others. My most frustrating moments on the phone are usually voicemail related. My family members are regularly called to assist me in deciphering a message. “What did she say? Did she say anything else? Are you sure? Did she saying anything about ….” I ask. I would love to be more independent and have my privacy back!

This week, Line1 Communications announced new service called Spinvox. Spinvox transcribes your voicemail to your email. Now, if you get a voicemail you can’t understand, you can log onto your email and read it. (more…)

Video Words - Closed Captioning on the Web

Samantha — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:24:57 +0000

AOL and CNN have a few news videos that offer closed captioning. Strangely enough, CNN.com doesn’t have caption options on any of its videos and I was unable to find any other news feeds with the CC box on AOL.

You know what to do: Go to AOL’s support central, click on Rate This Site, and tell them:

I love closed captioned videos! Please expand this feature from a few CNN videos to all your video content. I thank you and so do the other 31 million hard-of-hearing people in the US. Thank you, AOL!

You’ll need an AOL account to do so, but it’s free.

Let me know how it goes!