CapTel: THE END of a phone for the hard of hearing?
- Easy for Seniors
- Jul 23, 2018
- 1 min read
Updated: Nov 25, 2020
The CapTel phone converts what a hearing person says into text so a hearing impaired person can read what the other party has said. This makes communicating between two parties much easier.
How it works
There is a third person listening into the conversation – a trained relay officer from the National Relay Service. The relay officer re-speaks what the hearing person says into a computer that uses voice recognition software. This generates the text that appears on the elderly person’s CapTel phone a few seconds later.
The National Relay officer can only hear one side of the conversation – they are listening to what the hearing person is saying i.e. what the grand-daughter is saying to her grandma in the conversation above.
The CapTel suits elderly people with age related hearing loss because it looks a lot like the traditional telephone they grew up with - so it's intuitive to use.
NOTE: You do not need a CapTel phone to use the National Relay Service. Their app works with any device you can read text on e.g. a CapTel, smartphone, tablet or computer monitor.
UPDATE As of February 2020, support for CapTel phones is being phased out - Read more about this here
NRS-supported alternatives include NRS Captions, which delivers captions on a smartphone, computer or tablet whilst the user speaks on a telephone, or via Speak and
Read on a teletypewriter (TTY).
Other options include Skype Captions, transcription apps such as Live Transcribe, and the Konnekt video phone with captions.
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