Competition Among Captioned Telephone Services Heats Up With New ClearCaptions Service From Purple Communications

Purple Communications, which has been providing voice and video relay services and other assistance to deaf and hard-of-hearing consumers for over a decade, is broadening its portfolio with its new ClearCaptions IP closed captioned telephone service. Captioning of real-time telephone conversations over the Internet is currently available from two other vendors, Sprint Relay and Hamilton Relay, both of whom rely on the WebCaptel service developed by UltraTec. Purple Communications (formerly GoAmerica), which will offer the service under its FCC charter as an approved provider of Telecommunications Relay Services (TRS), is creating some competition and increasing awareness of telephone captioning with its entirely new ClearCaptions service.

ClearCaptions is currently in its beta-test or trial phase but is accepting new users who can register at the ClearCaptions web site. IP captioned telephone service lets you view real-time captions of your phone conversations on your Internet-connected computer (or your Internet-connected handheld phone or tablet). All you have to do is notify your relay service provider that you are making a call, and the service provider monitors both ends of the conversation and, aided by voice-recognition software, provides you with a real-time transcript of the call. That way, if you’re like me and tend to miss anywhere from 20 to 80 percent of a phone conversation depending on the quality of the connection and any background noise that might be present, you get to fill in the blanks with the transcript. Read more

Hamilton CapTel Offers 800i Captioned Telephone With Free TV Ears Thrown In For Only $99

Want to save $600 and get two of the hottest assistive listening devices (ALDs) available? Hamilton Relay’s Hamilton CapTel business unit is making a limited-time offer for its CapTel 800i captioned telephone, bundled with a TV Ears system, for only $99 combined. Hamilton CapTel has been special-offering its $595-list-price 800i captioned telephone system for $99 for a while, and now it is throwing in the highly popular wireless television amplifier from TV Ears for free.

All you have to do is go to the HamiltonCaptel web site’s special-offer landing page, grab the coupon/promo code, click through to distributor Weitbrecht Communications’ (WCI) fulfillment page, put the 800i in your shopping cart, then make sure to enter the coupon code in the “Redeem a discount coupon” space on the shopping cart page — the TV Ears product, which usually retails for $99.95, will appear as a second item in your basket with a discounted price of $0. It takes a few steps, and I don’t know how long the special offer will be available, but if you or anyone you know would benefit from either or both products, it’s a great deal.

Hamilton CapTel and TV Ears got together at the Consumer Electronics Show, where TV Ears returned the compliment by announcing it will bundle the 800i phone with the TV Ears system and a variety of personal sound amplifer products (PSAPs) and entry-level hearing aids. (More on that announcement later). The two companies make a welcome fit for hard-of-hearing consumers looking for cost-effective help with their hearing. TV Ears serves the huge market of people with mild hearing loss, positioning their easy-to-use TV-amplification headset as a “gateway” for those who might later migrate to more powerful assistive listening devices and/or hearing aids.

Hamilton CapTel has been a leader in delivering captioned telephone solutions to consumers, and the 800i is a great product for anyone who has trouble understanding phone conversations. The 800i plugs into a standard Internet connection, which enables you to initiate a free WebCapTel call, and the unit’s LCD displays lets a real-time transcript of the words of the person on the other end of the call while you conduct a regular conversation with the handset over a normal phone line. While Hamilton CapTel usually serves customers with more severe hearing loss, while TV Ears is for people with mild hearing loss, you can envision the same person using both. The 800i product makes the WebCapTel service easy to use, so that people with moderate hearing loss who only have occasional problems with the phone are more likely to use it; and the TV Ears product has enough of a volume boost to be of help even for many regular hearing-aid users with moderate hearing loss.

I plan on trialing both products and will let you know how they work.

After A Five-Year Wait, CapTel Real-Time Captioned Telephone Service Is Finally Available In Massachusetts

Nearly five years ago, I wrote, “I’m still a CapTel wannabee.” That was when the 32 states in the U.S. that had already approved the captioned telephone service did not yet include my home state of Massachusetts. Today I’m happy to say the wait is over. Starting on August 1, Hamilton Telecommunications will start providing its Hamilton CapTel service to residents of Massachusetts.

The CapTel captioned telephone service provides real-time captions of telephone conversations displayed on your phone. Users conference in a relay-service operator to provide a computer-aided transcription, which appears on an LCD display on their phones.

Why the long wait in Massachusetts? Politics, as usual. Enabling legislation was required to pave the way for the service, and our state legislature was slow off the mark. (Maybe that’s one of the reasons Massachusetts’ famed “Route 128 Technology Corridor” is a shadow of its former self these days.) The good news though is that I’ve been able to use another CapTel service for a while now, ever since the WebCapTel service went online. With WebCaptel, you don’t need a special phone but use your Internet connection instead to display the captions, and it works well. You can use it with your desktop or portable computer, or even with your iPhone. Web CapTel is available from Sprint WebCapTel as well as from Hamilton WebCapTel.

But even though I’m happy with the WebCapTel service, I’m sorely tempted to buy the CapTel phone manufactured by Ultratec and sign up for the service. It looks like a slick product that would be fun to use. In any case, being able to “see what they say” is the best way to avoid all those costly errors you must endure when a poor phone connection or a bad hearing day makes it impossible to get through a normal phone call.