Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Michelle. Welcome back to Finally Revealed. In this episode, I want to talk about something that is on our phone bill and has been for about 20 years and how it is actually helping people. It is a charge that appears as a line item on your phone bill and it relates to the Interstate Telecommunications Relay Services Fund. That is a fund that the telecommunications companies in the U.S. created in response to a requirement in the Americans with Disabilities Act, which came out a while ago, which required the telecommunications companies to help those with hearing loss to have the same service or comparable service to people who don't have a hearing loss. And so there is a program that helps people and I had an opportunity to talk with someone who is taking advantage of that system and here is what he had to say. Okay I'm here with my dad. Jay, you have a special phone called a caption call. How do you get a caption call?

Speaker 2: You have to go to your audiologist or your hearing person and they give you tests and if anything below a certain level of understanding then they give you a caption phone and if you will look at the screen, the screen will be delayed but it comes on automatically and you don't have to do anything and it will come on and it will even tell you if there is nothing sound, if there is music or whatever it is. And if you want to call me then I'll show you what it does. You can talk. It says you're unknown. Hello. How are you?

Speaker 1: Hi dad. Can you hear me?

Speaker 2: Yes I can hear you but you have to keep talking.

Speaker 1: What's the matter? Is the phone working?

Speaker 2: The phone is working if you'll talk.

Speaker 1: What's going on today? I was just calling to see what's happening today for the 4th of July.

Speaker 2: Oh maybe, maybe.

Speaker 1: Well we did try to, I did try to call in and show it how, a video how it would do it and somehow the proximity or something that was kind of screwed up. So we'll try it again next time I visit and I'll insert if I'm able to do it successfully and show you how it works. I'll insert it right here. But I just wanted to share with you what the program is and what the phone looks like and what you have to do to qualify for it. Now he explained how you qualify for it with your hearing loss but the other qualifications are you have to have a landline phone and high speed internet. Now there's no charge, the phone is about $250. There's no charge to the person receiving it for the actual phone or the delivery or a customer service or installation. They pay their regular phone bill and in fact they've been paying into the service the same as we have on their phone bill for many years. I just thought it was really helpful. It works off of voice recognition. It also plays, it shows the music. If there's music playing while you're on hold or if a company has an advertisement it shows that and it's just something that my dad has really liked and if you call him he says, wait I've got to run and get to my phone. He can still hear on the other phone but this is just so much easier. He doesn't miss anything. It doesn't interfere with his hearing aid and it just really allows the communication to flow which is the whole purpose. So I hope this was helpful to you. There is a website for CaptionCall if you want to look at it. It looks like they have an iPad app or iPad version. So you might look into that if that applies. I just thought it was really unique. I didn't know what it was before and now we do. So I hope that was helpful. If you want to know about our other videos, check out the playlists. Or we love subscribers. If this video was helpful to you, give us a thumbs up. And I'll see you next time.