Hamilton Web CapTel has introduced Mobile CapTel, an iPhone app enabling you to get live, real-time captions of telephone conversations you are having on your iPhone. Web CapTel is an amazing, free service available to anyone in the U.S. It lets you get real-time captions over the web for any phone conversation you may have. You sign up for a free Web Captel account and, when you make a phone call, let the Hamilton relay service know you want a captioned call. Their captioning expert, aided by voice-recognition software, listens in and supplies the live captions of your conversation on your computer screen.
The new Hamilton Mobile Captel service, currently available on any 3G/3GS iPhone, shows the captions on the iPhone screen. Users download the Mobile Captel iPhone application from Apple’s iPhone App Store and use it to log onto their Web Captel accounts. Because the service works with iPhone-compatible headsets (either wired or Bluetooth), you can speak and hear while looking at the screen in your hand.
While initially only available for the iPhone 3G/3GS, Hamilton Mobile CapTel has plans to provide the service on additional mobile devices. It is designed for mobile telephones capable of supporting both voice and data simultaneously through a 3G or Wi-Fi connection. So if you are have an Android phone or some other smart phone, you may be in luck sometime soon.
The Mobile CapTel App has another big benefit for hard-of-hearing users: the iPhone isn’t compatible with hearing aids, but the captioning might be useful enough to enable hard-of-hearing customer to buy the iPhone anyway. If you want to listen through your T-coil (a must for some users, including me), you need to find another phone. While Bluetooth headsets can work for people with hearing aids, I have found that holding a T4-rated cellphone (T1 is the lowest rating for T-Coils, T4 the highest) up to my ear enables me to hear far better. But the captioning on the iPhone might be enough to sway hard-of-hearing customers who have always wanted an iPhone.
TAP says
Those on TAP plan are paying 40 cents per minute…hence making a CapTel call is very expensive. I wish it was a CapTel in combination of a free VoIP App.
Tousi says
What about for the current iPhone 4? Keep up the good work!