Deaf people to put pressure on phone companies

By PETER CALDER

Deaf people are planning a rally at Parliament next Tuesday to acknowledge the Government's pledge this month that a telephone relay service would be established as a Telecommunications Service Obligation (TSO), effectively requiring phone companies to provide it.

The human-operated service takes messages sent by deaf subscribers using teletype phones and relays them aurally to hearing subscribers.

This enables the deaf to make arrangements that hearing people take for granted, for example to get quotes for a product or service without having to visit several business premises.

Deaf Association chief executive Jennifer Brain said the deaf community wanted to acknowledge the Government's recognition that they deserve access to telecommunications. "It's been a long time coming."

The action is also designed to put pressure on phone companies to act on the decision, which followed a Human Rights Commission finding that the failure to provide the relay service constituted discrimination, significantly reducing job opportunities and contributing to social isolation.

After trying to broker a settlement between two complainants - Kim Robinson of Auckland and Victoria Manning of Wellington - and the telecoms providers, the commission urged the Government "to use the TSO mechanism to resolve the matter".

But the Government announcement, made jointly by Communications Minister Paul Swain and Minister for Disability Issues Ruth Dyson, has angered the companies, who say it amounts to a tax on telephones. Ernie Newman, the chief executive of the Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand, said the industry might challenge the decision in court.

"We believe it is a social service and should be funded [from the Social Welfare budget]," he said.

Newman is not swayed by a calculation which shows that such a service would add 25c a month at most to phone bills.

"Who's to say the floodgates won't open to many other social services being provided by carriers which would then have to be added to phone bills?"

The association also argues that the relay system is "conceptually obsolete" because of the internet and text-messaging.

But Jennifer Brain says that providers are fobbing the deaf off.

"It's always the same argument," she says. "They never come up with the goods. The oral way is still the best way to get real-time service."

Mr Swain described the cost of the service as "a pittance" that the providers might absorb.

"We consider it's a collective social responsibility, just as you pay taxes for roads you never drive on."