A study by the US federal government indicates that as many as four Americans in every 1,000 are functionally deaf, while adding in those who have any kind of hearing trouble pushes the number to more than 100 people per 1,000 affected. In the UK the Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID) puts the number of deaf and hard of hearing people in the country at nearly 9 million – or about 15% of the population. That’s possibly no surprise for anyone who has ridden on a New York City subway or London tube and experienced the gratuitous MP3 player concert blasting out of the ears of a nearby passenger. There has to be concern that the numbers of people with hearing problems are only going to rise with the increased use of ear buds for everything from music, movies, podcasts and voice calls.
Clearly the hearing-impaired have more trouble using the phone services that the rest of us take for granted in our daily lives . So what to do? Voice-to-text services can really help. A Birmingham Institute of the Deaf report found that 98% of the hearing impaired population in the UK uses mobile SMS messaging to communicate (and to report crimes –more and more police departments in the UK and US have been adopting this practice!). And while some carriers offer SMS-only plans tailored to hearing-impaired needs, some carriers still require both voice and SMS plans to be subscribed to – with many hearing impaired subscribers then paying for a feature they have no use for. But the reality for any subscriber is that SMS-only plans are limiting – especially for day-to-day work needs or when meeting new people one might like to keep in touch with.
For the hearing impaired in particular, adding a voicemail-to-text feature on mobile carrier plans can open up the circle of friends, acquaintances, business colleagues, doctors, you name it that previously would have been limited to SMS or email only communications. And for many older people the idea of typing an SMS is not the most user-friendly experience for communicating.
When I first joined SpinVox my grandma, at age 80 one of those `older people`, was so excited. Committed to retaining her independence it was frustrating to her that she couldn’t hear voicemail messages (even using her hearing aids – her ‘ears’ as she calls them). So she would try and listen to the messages 5-10 times before giving me a call and having me listen to them over the phone to let her know if that message from the bank was urgent or just a courtesy call. Now, with voicemail-to-text she can retain not only her independence, but also have a saved text message with all the contact or detail information she needs – no more scrambling for pen and paper to write it all down or the need to locate the scrap of paper or back of an envelope where a message was written previously (which we all know inadvertently gets thrown out…doh!).
Today in the US, voicemail-to-text services are available from Skype, Google Voice, Vonage and some regional carriers (surprising when compared to Canada where voicemail-to-text is available to more than 95% of the country!). Imagine how useful and cost effective voicemail-to-text would be if it was a standard feature in all major carrier mobile plans be it UK, US, Australia, etc? Given all the baby boomers in retirement age and the ever-increasing number of hearing-impaired individuals this is a service we can all benefit from.
If you’d like voicemail-to-text your carrier doesn’t offer it – ask for it! With escalating competition in the mobile market and carriers looking for new ways to retain loyal customers there has never been a better time to ‘ask and you shall receive’ from your mobile operator!
If you’d like more information on voicemail-to-text for the hearing impaired please drop us a line.
RachelL
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