In a victory for people with hearing disabilities, the FCC has ruled that Video Relay Services (VRS) must be interoperable. Users must be allowed to access any VRS provider with their equipment. All VRS companies must be able to take and transmit calls from subscribers to services besides their own.', '

"We're very happy with this," said Karen Peltz Strauss, legal consultant for Communications Service for the Deaf, a non-profit VRS service in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. "It is something that we have asked for for two years."

People with speech and hearing disabilities use broadband video systems to reach sign language interpreters, who translate the sign language into speech for whoever the user has called. Disability rights advocates have long protested what they call "blocking"—modifying VRS equipment so that customers cannot use it with another telephone company's VRS service.

"Restricting the use of a provider's VRS service so that consumers cannot access other VRS providers is inconsistent with the functional equivalency mandate, the public interest and the intent of Congress," the FCC declared today.

FCC Chair Kevin Martin called "troublesome" the impact that this practice has on making emergency calls. "A VRS user with access to only one provider could effectively be denied access to emergency responders, raising serious public safety concerns," Martin commented on the ruling.

Peltz Strauss also praised the commission for asking for public comment on setting up a global database of "proxy numbers" for VRS consumers. Conventional telephone customers take for granted the fixed number associated with their home or office phone, or their cell phone. But when VRS users make sign calls, emergency responders can only trace the randomly changing, or dynamic, Internet Protocol (IP) address linked to their computer.

"We want a functionally equivalent numbering system to what hearing people have," Peltz Strauss explained.

For an interview with Karen Peltz Strauss see LL-FCC, December 22, 2005.