Japan Launches Public Phone Relay Service for People with Hearing or Speech Disabilities (2)
Under the Act on Facilitating the Use of Telephones by the Hearing Impaired, etc., the relay service is financed by grants contributed by all the country’s telecommunication providers, which collect a “telephone relay service fee” from telephone users. The fee for fiscal 2021, which started in April, is 7 yen (about 6.4 cents) per phone number per year, which is added to the phone bill.
Relay service users with hearing and/or speech disabilities will be charged a monthly fee of 178.2 yen (about $1.62), including tax, plus 5.5 yen (about 5 cents) per minute for a fixed phone and 33 yen (about 30 cents) for a mobile phone. For those who choose not to pay a monthly fee, the telephone charge is 16.5 yen (about 15 cents) per minute for a fixed phone and 44 yen (about 40 cents) for a mobile phone. Emergency calls are free anytime.
The new undertaking, however, is not without problems as we experienced in the course of the foundation’s trial service from 2013. One of the biggest hurdles is that the hearing public is generally unaware of the existence of the relay service. It is still common for a hearing person to hang up on a deaf relay user after hearing only a few words because they think the caller is trying to sell something or making a scam call.
To overcome this obstacle, The Nippon Foundation Telecommunication Relay Service is working together with the Ministry for Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the telecommunications industry, consumer organizations and other stakeholders via an advertising campaign for television, newspapers and the Internet introducing the general public to the new relay service and how it works. It is also important to listen to the opinions of users in our quest to make any necessary improvements. Training enough quality sign language interpreters is one of the challenges the service faces.
The relay service provider started accepting applications for the new service on June 1. The number of registered users with hearing or speech disabilities now stands at about 3,000 and the provider aims to increase this to 14,000 by the end of the current fiscal year in March 2022.
I sincerely hope that as many hearing people as possible come to understand how the new service works so that those with a hearing or speech impairment can place telephone calls just like anybody else in a more inclusive society.
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