accessibility_fail | The telephone thing

To put it mildly, I have issues when it comes to telephones.

In the extreme case, I can have a conversation over the telephone without really being able to understand the other person, while saying things I don't mean, but that bit doesn't really matter because I don't know what it is I'm saying and the other person isn't able to understand me anyway. Subsets of this set of circumstances crop up very regularly. As is probably understandable, telephone conversations with people I do not know very well a) take up a large chunk of my spoons and b) are singularly unpleasant experiences that I will go to great lengths to avoid.

So why is it that there are so many things you can only ever do by phone?

The current fail is me trying to get a code from my mobile phone provider so I can switch providers and still keep my number. I send an e-mail. "Sorry, call this number!" I go to their store. "Sorry, you can only do this by phone!" Why is it that when I am standing right there I have to do it by phone? Why is it that among the multitude of alternate communication channels we have at our disposal it has to be this specific one? Is it so utterly impossible for you to imagine there are people who might have problems with it?

The really frustrating thing is, of course, that I *can* use a fistful of spoons to grit my teeth and lift the handset and call the company anyway, with at least a reasonable chance of being able to communicate. There are people who can't. These people might, actually, have mobile phones as you can do far more with them than simply calling people. Or maybe they'd like to do things like changing the address for their credit card (another one of those "sorry, phone only!" things for my bank, which has resulted in my credit card having been unusable for the last year). Methinks Deaf or HoH people, among others, would like to be able to use credit cards too?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Not a solution to the stupid "must be done over the phone" problem, but have you looked into using a TTY or text to speech telephone service? TTY services let users with hearing or speech impediments use the phone via a keyboard and a relay operator, but I see no reason why they couldn't also be used by someone with other difficulties with communicating on the phone.

I see from your userinfo that you're in Germany, and sadly I don't know what kind of system they have there and my English-language googling is getting me confirmation that there's some kind of system but not any specifics, probably because I don't know the proper German terms/abbreviations to search for.

I just realized that that first sentence doesn't make much sense. TTY isn't a solution to the fact that people are dumb and insist on some things being done over the phone, but it might be a way to make it easier to deal with.

Of course, then there are the people who hang up on relay calls, thinking that it's a telemarketer or something. ::headdesk:: Sometimes I wish there were a method of administering cluebat beatings over the phone.

How exactly do those kind of phone conversations start or come across. Is it a machine, or a live operator? Because I do automatically hang up when I hear a pre-recorded voice. It never occurred to me that it could be a recording to assist someone with hearing disabilities.

As far as I know, it's a live operator. I've never been on the receiving end of a relay call, so I'm not certain, but from everyone's experiences that I've read about it was a live operator...

I've received & made relay calls. In general, the operator (in USA called a Communication Assistant) will check to see if you're familiar with using relay. The CA is supposed to be a communication utility, not a participant. Before you give them the number to dial, you discuss how you want things to go. CAs offer to explain the relay to the receiving party, but that often results in the hang-ups, because the CAs' voices do sound like people who are working in call centers because hey! they're working on the phone all day.

So I'll tell the CA, "I'll introduce myself," then when they type at me
< RING … RING …. RING … MALE > HELLO, BLUEBERRY HILL CLINIC
I can type back,
Good morning, this is Jesse the K calling about my appointment for next month. I'm calling through the telephone relay so there will be a short lag between questions and answers, please stand by.

It seems there are fewer hangups when I'm always speaking for myself, instead of starting off with the CA explaining xie's speaking for someone else.

I'm from Germany but living in the UK, so that's luckily not an issue. Thank you for the tip! I always hesitate with these things because part of me still feels as if these are for Real Disabled People and I'm just pretending, and after all I *can* manage phone conversations with a huge amount of effort so... it doesn't help that for people with my speech disorder, where phone terror is quite common, desensitisation is always seen as the number one method of dealing with it and I have never heard anyone raise the idea of alternate communication methods.

OTOH, it seems as if the amount of phone conversations I absolutelypositivelyMUST make keeps going up, and it is becoming more and more of a serious problem. I almost wound up with all my belongings stranded in the city I used to live in because all the removals companies I'd looked at seemed to be of the phone-only sort and I kept putting it off. >

At least half the people using the telephone relay system don't have any impairment — the typically hearing folks on the voice end.

Please don't feel like your impairment is not Real Enough. I personally know autistics in the U.S. who use relay because they just can't process spoken language fast enough. Some days I use relay because my short-term memory is unreliable.

Finally, finally we're in a "disability rights" society (or at least the start of one) where there isn't a limited pool of charity. We don't have to hold back so that others can participate. It's there to be used.

(Although too many people do hang right up on relay calls, as codeman points out. One reason has been that the U.S. phone companies have been providing completely open IP relay services for several years, and griefers have used them to make thousands of prank phone calls. Starting in Nov 09 people have to register for IP relay, which should cut down some on the griefers.)

Thank you, I think I really needed to hear that. I know objectively that my reaction is just classic invisible-disabilities-don't-count stuff and that it's so much bullshit, but I can't help myself thinking "but that's for actual deaf people!" when I read about this stuff. I especially needed to hear that because most of these issues are in fact because I'm autistic. (Hypersensitivity/other sensory issues and processing lag, yay! Also, that pesky "say things without knowing what they are when feeling sufficiently rushed" thing. Fun times all around!) So knowing that other people with my issues or ones very similar to them are using this actually helps enormously.

And I have found a website that has helpful info for people in the UK, and the prospect of being able to do a large part of those Necessary Phone Conversations via text makes me want to jump up and start singing and dancing. I think my flatmates would be slightly disturbed.

V glad I can be of service *grin*.

Heh, my auditory processing is screwy enough that I often identify myself as hard of hearing even though it's not technically true...

The telephone thing

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