Thread Subject: Re: Working our way to common ground.

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From: Paul E. Jones
Date: Thu, Jul 05 2007 10:10 AM

Karen,

The phone was designed for people that can hear. It is still designed for hearing people. The frequencies supported and transported over the telephone network are designed for speech.

But, the IP network was not. It was designed for data. So, as we move toward IP networks as being the means of communication, why should a hearing person be forced to utilize a device optimized and primarily designed for hearing people?

I'm not at all suggesting that the device that is used by the deaf user will not have voice functionality. Perhaps it might be an IP phone (fixed or mobile) with voice and text. However, if I read the proposed changes to the law as they are with all of the emphasis on "phones" then it seems to remove the possibility for me to use some device other than a phone to communicate. By "another device", I don't mean Blackberries and such-- I am thinking of a UMPC with software like Gunnar's Total Conversation system.

Imagine being able to communicate using sign language via an Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) that communicates with the Unified Communications network within the enterprise, airport, or other. This is what we need to encourage, but is that a phone? More importantly, is my device going to be accommodated by the network?

Paul
----- Original Message -----
From: Karen Peltz Strauss
To: TEITAC Telecommunications Subcommittee
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 9:14 AM
Subject: Re: [teitac-telecom] Working our way to common ground.


Paul,

The concern that I have with your message is that our society is still very "phone-based" for day-to-day communications. Sure, those of us in our workcircles may have blackberries, laptops, etc., but think about what the average person uses to contact their plumbers, doctors, teachers, etc. They use the phone as we have always known it. Think about your average day, and what you use your phone for (as compared to e-mail or IM). Who do you call because you know they are going to pick up by phone, rather than respond by e-mail?

Think about the situation where you are in an airport and your flight has been cancelled. You need to call the airline to make a new reservation; you need to call the car service to change your pick up time; you need to call relatives that might not be on e-mail or IM (e.g., senior citizens) to let them know about your new plans. I know that as a hearing person, I have relied on the phone for all of the above situations. Sure, I might be able to change my flight on line, but again, what if I am an average person (not a Beltway person) who does not carry around the Internet with me. I was in Chicago last year, and my flight was cancelled at the last minute. An entire plane-load of people needed to suddenly change their flights. What did everyone do? They either ran over to the airline PHONE or got on their cellPHONES to scramble to get the next flights out.

It seems to me that this is not an either/or situation. We hearing people have the option of contacting people by phone or via pagers, IM, e-mail, etc. There are times when the latter will work just fine, but there are as many times that having access to a phone is just as important, and could be critical. "Everything I see through these questions suggests that a deaf person has to find and somehow interface with a "phone" in order to communicate. My question is why? Why look for a phone? Why not enable the deaf user to communicate independently of the phone?" I say, until we can say this for hearing people, we should not say this for people who cannot hear.

Karen
----- Original Message -----
From: Paul E. Jones
To: TEITAC Telecommunications Subcommittee
Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 8:49 AM
Subject: Re: [teitac-telecom] Working our way to common ground.


Gregg,

I did not see anything in the questions under "Group 1", but I also did not see anything that encouraged use of other access methods.

Let me speak personally, as you can imagine I have given this a lot of thought. Daily, the issue becomes more of a concern for me. If I were entirely without hearing, I would not want to use a voice phone. It would be useless to me. What I want is a means to communicate. Everything I see through these questions suggests that a deaf person has to find and somehow interface with a "phone" in order to communicate. My question is why? Why look for a phone? Why not enable the deaf user to communicate independently of the phone?

I would personally want to be able to use my mobile device (including Pocket PC or Ultra Mobile PC). If I do not have such a device with me, I would appreciate have some means of communicating, but I would not want to be tied to a very horrible interface provided by a telephone. Phones simply are not the best means of enabling text communication and I would personally like to have another kind of device available to me.

So, while I'm not opposed to having text on the phone for the case where nothing else is available, the danger I believe exists in focusing s much on the phone is that a "phone" will be the only device I will generally have available to me. Those I have worked with over the recent years have told me repeatedly that they want something much better than the TTY devices they have today and text on a phone does not satisfy those desires.

So, we should place some emphasis elsewhere, not just the phone. How can I interconnect my text device with the network?

Paul

----- Original Message -----
From: Gregg Vanderheiden
To: 'TEITAC Telecommunications Subcommittee'
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 12:31 PM
Subject: Re: [teitac-telecom] Working our way to common ground.


Hi Paul,



In the end, what we have is indeed goals pitted against the reality of what technologies we have (from past, present and future). And in the end we need to say specifically what we need to do.



But the list starts with upper level goals and works our way down so we can see what we have or don't have at the bottom.



Starting with your group 1 comments





PJ: If a person is deaf, then why have text conversation only where a phone exists?



GV: Where did you see anything that limited text conversation to places where there were phones? The items below only said that, if there is a phone that people who can talk are allowed to use, then people who are deaf should be ABLE TO (not forced to) make a call from that phone or by attaching something to the phone.



PJ: This seems like a carry-over from "old world" thinking where the user's devices were required to interconnect with a physical telephone or telephone line. Such a requirement does not exist with the IP world, as a user could be connected anywhere. If my employer provides a wireless network and I have a wireless text-capable device, should I not be able to use that anywhere in the building?



GV: Yes you should. And the items below do not restrict this in any way. But I would ask:

1) "If a person who speaks is able to use the phone in the lobby (so they don't have to make a long distance call to call upstairs) shouldn't a deaf person be able to ?

2) If a person is deaf and cannot afford a mobile phone, shouldn't they be able to use the free phones that are available for voice users?

3) If a person is deaf and visiting a remote office, should they not be able to use the phones there? (rather than incur charges on their personal phone - or have to wait half a day to get authorization from a busy system administrator (who must check with home office for authorization to connect foreign devices) before they can connect their personal device to the network.



There are always cases where the deaf person has no problem using their personal device (that they or their company pays for). And for those people we do not need regulations - and the proposed regulations do not affect them. But for the rest, for the less well connected, for the majority that are unemployed (section 255 or the public under 508) we need to be sure that access is available.



PJ: Likewise, could I not use a text device at my desk or on a PC completely independent of a voice device? Should I be forced to interface my text device with a telephone?



GV: "Yes you certainly could" is the answer to both questions. And nowhere is anyone preventing a person from using those options. So I'm not sure where the question is coming from. Did you see something below that would prevent you from doing what you liked?




Gregg
-- ------------------------------
Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D.






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From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Paul E. Jones
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 8:15 AM
To: TEITAC Telecommunications Subcommittee
Subject: Re: [teitac-telecom] Working our way to common ground.

Gregg,



I really don't know how to comment on these different groups, since it seems to have goals and objectives pitted against specific technologies. Given what prompted this e-mail, I think it's probably important to first step back and only focus on the high-level objectives. Then, we can discuss more specific details. (But, I don't think specific protocols should ever be specified in the law, since it means the law will either restrict the industry as a side consequence or it will allow people to side-step the law entirely, depending on it gets interpreted.)



Group 1 seems to present the desired objectives. So, let me comment the first point.



If a person is deaf, then why have text conversation only where a phone exists? This seems like a carry-over from "old world" thinking where the user's devices were required to interconnect with a physical telephone or telephone line. Such a requirement does not exist with the IP world, as a user could be connected anywhere. If my employer provides a wireless network and I have a wireless text-capable device, should I not be able to use that anywhere in the building? Likewise, could I not use a text device at my desk or on a PC completely independent of a voice device? Should I be forced to interface my text device with a telephone?



Paul

----- Original Message -----

From: Gregg Vanderheiden

To: 'TEITAC Telecommunications Subcommittee'

Sent: Monday, July 02, 2007 1:53 PM

Subject: [teitac-telecom] Working our way to common ground.





Below is a list of statements that I think we should walk down to find out where we are all together and where we have differences.



I think it will be much easier to find final wording if we can figure out what our agreements and differences are -- and then work on ways to address the differences.



I am seeing too many proposals that break something when trying to fix something else -- or that seem to fix the wrong thing. We won't get far that way.





I would suggest we just ask for objections to the following statements - and see how many we have consensus on - then work on the rest.



This will also help remind those less familiar with all of the aspects we are covering.





I suspect we can go through the first items pretty quickly and will find our differences down lower.



GROUP 1 Statements


1.. People who are DEAF OR HARD OF HEARING
a.. should have reliable text conversation wherever people who speak and hear have reliable voice conversation, either directly or via AT.


2.. People who are DEAF AND CAN SPEAK
a.. should be able to use speech to send and text to receive communication (either simultanously or alternately), either directly or via AT.


3.. People who are HARD OF HEARING
a.. should be able to use speech to send and speech and text together to receive communication (either simultanously or alternately), either directly or via AT.


4.. People who CAN HEAR BUT CANNOT SPEAK OR SPEAK CLEARLY
a.. should be able to to use speech to receive and speech and text together to send communication (either simultanously or alternately), either directly or via AT.


5.. People WITH DISABILITIES
a.. should not have to pay more to make phone calls than people without disabilities. (Cost of AT hardware not included.)


GROUP 2 Statements


6.. TTY (Baudot/TIA-825) is the only current method supported universally in the US for text conversation on the PSTN


7.. In the evolving PUBLIC IP phone system - we want to use Text Data not TTY (or other ) audio tones to convey text.


8.. IM is a valuable means of communication for everyone but particulaly for people who are deaf.


9.. IM is not real-time text. It is often near-realtime messaging. But it is messaging. And it can be delayed in addition to normal messaging delay (until 'enter').


10.. Real-time conversation and IM are both valuable (to all communicators) but fill different needs.
a.. IM is sometimes superior to real-time conversation.
b.. Other times real-time conversation is superior.
c.. IM is also used in place of real-time conversation when real-time conversation is not possible for some reason.


GROUP 3 Statements


11.. Real-time text communication should be as reliable as real-time voice communication


12.. Real-time text portion of a call should be as interoperable as real-time voice portion.


13.. There is no (interoperability) need to specify which real-time Text Transport format is used WITHIN a SELF CONTAINED SYSTEM as long as the format is reliable and supported by all components in the system.
a.. "Self-contained system" is a system where all of the terminals, routers and servers are manufactured by or controlled by a single entity.
b.. A "Self-contained system" can include an Internet leg if both ends terminate inside the "Self contained system".
c.. Where the self contained system connects to other systems - (see below)


14.. For two systems to interoperate (with real-time text) they must both support some protocol between them.


15.. For a system to interoperate with an UNKNOWN system - it must support AT LEAST ONE format that is known to be SUPPORTED BY ALL OTHER SYSTEMS.


16.. RFC-4103 is the most commonly supported real-time text format for SIP based IP Phone terminals connected directly to Foreign SIP Servers.
a.. Foreign SIP server is a server that is not owned by the same entity that owns the terminal phone.


17.. RFC-4103 and RFC-4351 are essentially identical except that
a.. RFC-4103 (also called text/t140) sends text data packets on "text" channel that is separate from the audio data channel
b.. RFC-4351 (also called audio/t140c) sends text data packets on the "audio" channel along with the audio packets. (But the text data is still sent as T140 data, not as audio tones.)
i. The use of a single channel is of benefit to PSTN gateways because it halves the number of 'ports' that must be created to handle a call and the voice and text are mixed on the PSTN side anyway

ii. With RFC-4351 it is not possible to have simultaneous voice and text in one direction (which is required for IP Captioned Telephone) without creating/having an additional SSRC in the terminal device to keep the two data streams separate.

iii. RFC-4351 is one of the multiple options that can be used in meeting TIA-1001

a.. RFC-4351 has Intellectual Property claims against it from Cisco. RFC-4103 also has soft Cisco claims but RFC-4013 is a minor update of RFC-2793 which had no claims and RFC-4103 can be implemented without involving Cisco Intellectual Property.


18.. VoIP Phones (terminals) (hardware and software) that have multiline displays ALREADY should display realtime text data that they receive.
a.. Does NOT require that display be added
b.. Does NOT require that whole display be used


19.. VoIP Phones (terminals) (hardware and software) that have text input capability ALREADY should should allow realtime text data to be transmitted.
a.. Does NOT require that a keyboard be added
b.. Does NOT require any text input capability that is not already possible with the terminal


20.. Where phones do not provide built in real-time text conversation capabilities, there should be a way to connect a device that does
a.. Either through the phone or in parallel
b.. That has the same privileges as the phone
c.. IF the phone is a public/shared phone - then connecting the text capable phone should not require an administrator.























Gregg

------------------------

Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D.
Professor - Depts of Ind. Engr. & BioMed Engr.
Director - Trace R & D Center
University of Wisconsin-Madison
<http://trace.wisc.edu/> FAX 608/262-8848

DSS Player at http://tinyurl.com/dho6b

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