Alerts

Abstract

A press notice from the City of Westminster reports that a phone‐for‐the‐deaf service is being tested in Marylebone Public Library. From the Library the deaf person rings an operator at the Royal National Institute for the Deaf and, via a keyboard and VDU screen, indicates who they would like to telephone. When the call is made by the RNID operator the deaf person can speak to the distant end but replies are received by the operator, who, using a similar keyboard, types them back to the Marylebone Library. This is public provision of an already available system whereby deaf people, with a £200 keyboard adapter and their own domestic TV set, can have help from RNID in making telephone calls. It is said that deaf people much prefer this system to merely asking a friend to make the call for them because they feel they are “not bothering anyone”, the operator being somewhere else and therefore “out of sight, out of mind”. Deaf people not familiar with the equipment will receive instruction from Marylebone Library staff.

Citation

ASHWORTH, W. (1986), "Alerts", New Library World, Vol. 87 No. 7, pp. 136-137. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb038696