I don’t remember where I saw this Microsoft form, but it had a field I had never seen on a form before — at least, not from a company that doesn’t deal with products primarily for the deaf and hard-of-hearing.
I’ve put all but one TTY into the closet where they are turning yellow in spite of protection from light. The one TTY in my office is the voice-carry over (VCO) phone with no keys. I use the Internet to take care of most of my calls as it saves desk space and uses my comfortable keyboard.
So if I need to call a TTY number, what can I use on the Internet? Using the old method of Hyperterminal didn’t work. Searching for this info yielded no results — all of the results sent me to current relay resources, but not TTY to TTY or computer to TTY.
What’s out there?
3 comments
Have you used or heard of NexTalk?
http://www.nextalk.net/
Yes — in fact, I used it a few years back. But for some reason, I had problems using it the last time I tried.
Just to note that NexTalk has updated their software to support video conferencing… of course Windows only.
(DISCLAIMER: not plugging for NexTalk nor work for them.. just showing what’s new)
see what’s new; http://www.nextalk.net/nextalk62/nextalk.pl?rm=whatsnew
There are many new features in NexTalk 6.3!
Video Conferencing
NexTalk now supports video calls! Creating a video call to another NexTalk user is easy… just call them as a normal NTS call. An NTS call can start out as text only, and then a separate video window can be launched from the conversation window.
“One-Nbr™”
The NexTalk 6.3 “One Number” feature can handle incoming TTY, voice, and fax calls for both hearing and deaf NexTalk users. The NexTalk Viewer now supports audio voice-mail messages and will also display fax images. When an incoming call arrives, One-Nbr can present a pop-up form to the dialed user, show this user who is calling, and offer this user choices for handling the call. The user can select “Accept the call with text relay”, “Accept the call with NexTalk video relay”, “Accept the call with video phone VRS” “Take Message with Relay”, “Forward the call” (to any other phone), “Send to NTS Voicemail”, and so on. If the NexTalk user is deaf, and the call is a voice call, then NexTalk can bring a text, or video, relay agent onto the call. If the deaf caller selects “Take Message with Relay” for a voice call, then One-Nbr connects the voice caller to a relay operator to accept the voice message and convert to text. This text message is then stored in the deaf NexTalk user’s mailbox.
“IM Chat”
Many people are familiar with the “block send” text chat of MSN, AOL, Yahoo, etc. NexTalk 6.3 now supports this text style as well. NexTalk continues its support for its traditional “Text Call” live streaming text and IM “pop up” text messages and Notifications.
Fax support
NexTalk 6.3 now accepts inbound fax calls, and the NexTalk Viewer will display these fax images as well as print them. NTS-6’s “One-Nbr” and fax supports creates a fax-to-the-desktop solution for incoming fax calls.
Precomposed Text and Custom Text in version 6.3
“Precomposed Text” are text blocks that are available to send from any NTS call or chat session. Each NTS user can create his or her own text blocks. Precomposed text blocks owned by groups are available to every member of that group.
Improved screen reader support
— Nextalk 6.3 has completely new Jaws scripts, and numerous code changes were made to improve screen reader accessibility.