HLAA invited to ATIS Incubator on Wireless Emergency Notification

When an emergency happens and you are on the move, how will you get the help you need? Do you have a mobile phone? If so, how will you use it to reach 9-1-1? Voice? VCO? Mobile Captions? TTY?

Reaching 9-1-1 is not always easy for people with hearing loss, particularly when we use mobile phones. Many people have text-only plans because they use text more than voice. If you have a text-only plan, you need to be sure you know how to reach 9-1-1. You should be able to contact 9-1-1 using voice even on text only plan – but you should check with your mobile phone carrier to be sure. And unless you live in one of the few places in the US that do respond to SMS the 9-1-1 centers, called public safety answering points (PSAPs), will not have the ability to receive and respond to text messages from your mobile phone. They do respond to voice calls and can still respond to TTY calls, but how many of us schlep a portable TTY around?

Even if you have a voice plan, will you be able to hear on the phone? It would be great if we could call 9-1-1 and get text in response and that may happen someday. Until that time, do call 9-1-1, and tell the dispatcher you cannot hear, but you will give them the essential information: the address and the city of the emergency, your phone number in case you get cut off, and the type of emergency. That information will help them find you and dispatch the right emergency responder, as long as you can voice for yourself. If you cannot voice for yourself, think about schlepping that portable TTY after all.

When Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG 9-1-1) becomes a reality, you will have several ways to reach 9-1-1 directly: voice, text, video, images or data using your mobile phone. But it will take some time to build out the infrastructure to support that. Right now, the only two ways to reach 9-1-1 directly is via TTY or voice, despite the fact that most people are no longer using TTY’s, and many people use text, email, IM, SMS, and video regularly on their mobile phones.

So, what do we do until NG 9-1-1? That’s the question the ATIS (Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions) Incubator group on Interim Non-Voice Emergency Services (INES) is working on. ATIS is a membership organization of leading service providers, manufacturers, wireless companies, carriers, software designers, Internet Service Providers, consultants, and other companies who seek work together to solve critical telecommunications issues. July 7, they invited HLAA and other organizations representing people with hearing loss to the table to address the issue of access to 9-1-1 for non-voice users until NG 9-1-1 is available. We are pleased to see ATIS reaching out to consumer representatives for input. We look forward to seeing a workable solution available soon for people with hearing loss using mobile phones in an emergency.