I just completed my first phone call through Sprint Web Captel’s service and it was wonderful. I used to make voice carry over (VCO) calls, but the problem is that they took me away from my computer and I couldn’t save the conversation on the Captel phone.
I have used the TTY to make VCO calls and print the conversation, but I didn’t like wasting paper or the noisy grinding it made while printing. So the web service combines the best of both worlds for those who would like to talk rather than type their conversations (and avoid increasing chances of carpal tunnel).
This flyer shows how the service works [pdf file].
The nice thing is that I can hear the person on the other end and when she pauses. As soon as the person stop speaking, I try to minimize the silence by trying to figure out what the person said based on what the operator has typed before completing the sentence. We humans don’t like silence.
But if the person says something very short, then that’s impossible. Generally, I’ll recognize “OK” and other “agreed”-type answers… but if it’s “What’s that called?” Then it becomes an uncomfortable silence while I wait on the operator.
It will take a little practice to get comfortable with this set up since it’s been a long time since I regularly VCO’d. I fumbled a little and it didn’t help that my voice was a little hoarse due to allergies.