The Baudot TTY or TDD is the most common """"""""text telephone"""""""" used by the deaf. The TTY is largely incompatible with existing communications systems, and this serves to isolate the deaf. Many organizations would like to improve access for the deaf, but adding analog phone lines and TTY hardware is expensive, complex, and difficult to maintain. The proposed research will create a """"""""text telephone network"""""""" of centralized communications servers which can make adding TTY accessibility as simple as ordering any telephone service. In the proposed system T1 phone lines and TTY hardware will exist off-site in a communications infrastructure. A simple software program on the desk top can """"""""TTY enable"""""""" any, or every, person within an organization. The proposed R&D will also create """"""""gateways"""""""" between TTYs and modem devices. For example, in the Phase I work a gateway was created which allows any browser user to call a TTY. Additional gateways between TTYs and two-way alpha pagers, PDAs, WAP phones, email, and automated voice systems will also be developed. If modern communications systems become linked to TTYs, then this should provide a migration path for the deaf to use these more modem devices.
In April 2000 the Justice Department issued a report starting that the GSA should investigate putting TTY accessibility on every federal employee's desk top. Pieces of the proposed technology are already installed in pilot sites at federal agencies and other organizations.
