Sorenson Communications made sure they took interpreters from deaf people in a Canadian locale and used them to benefit the U.S. I'm not at all interested in their loophole rationales.
Phone service lures away deaf interpreters
This is not a problem: It's a problem of the U.S. government subsidizing relay/interpretors, and Canada not subsidizing. The playing field is unbalanced.
Solution: Have Canada COMPETE! Let us all Canadian deafies DEMAND our government pay a subsidy to improve our relay services.
We don't have IP Relay.
We don't have Captioned Telephone.
We don't have BlackBerry relay.
We don't have AIM Relay.
We don't have Video Relay!!!
As a software developer, I am lucky to invent my own homebrew Bell Canada IP Relay system (
MiniTTY) and I got my own workarounds to let me use WebCapTel in Canada (Hint: I own two U.S. phone lines by a U.S. phone company). I use Rogers SpinVox voice-to-text voice-recognition voicemail so I can read my voicemails. I use a BlackBerry maxed out with features such as JiveTalk and mobile IP-Relay with Bell Canada using my homebrew solution. Amongst other things. I'm one of the few deaf Canadian smart enough to develop workarounds that allow me to use a lot of the enhanced services in Canada. It's sad that as an educated Canadian, that I need high level of technical knowledge to take advantage of enhanced services in Canada where none exist.
It's not Sorenson's fault. My interpretation is that it is the disparity of subsidies that the U.S. government pays Sorenson which in turns pays Canadian interpretors to work for the U.S. Our Canadian government needs to do the same to balance this playing field!
Yes, you heard me right, your taxpayer dollar pays for Relay, VRS, IP-Relay, etc. It's called the Telecommunications Relay Fund.
www.fcc.gov/cgb/dro/trs.html <-- Genuine U.S. government site, that shows Sorenson is PAID by taxpayers! The same dollars are coaxing our interpretors out of our country.
And yes, you heard me right, Canada isn't doing jack about subsidizing the improvement of deaf accessibility.
And yes, I'm a Canadian complaining. We're a great country, but I'll be blunt: Deaf accessibility is second fiddle. We may joke about a few shortcomings of the U.S. at times -- but I welcome "BLAME CANADA" when it comes to deaf accessibility. Bring on the insults to our Canadian government, I say!
Not convinced? See Sorenson's website, they implicitly admit they're subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer while they are not by Canada:
www.sorensonvrs.com/canada/
Copy & Pasted from Sorenson's website:
Note: The video relay service program in the US is paid for by the US Government via the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and calls that do not begin or end within the US and its territories are not eligible for reimbursement. Therefore, Canada-to-Canada VRS demonstration calls are not submitted to the FCC for reimbursement.
And they're trying to petition Canada in doing the same:
Copy & Pasted from Sorenson's website:
For Sorenson VRS to become available in Canada, the Canadian government needs to implement a program to reimburse VRS providers. Sorenson VRS encourages you to contact the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) Consumer Affairs division and help them to realize the advantages of Sorenson VRS for the Canadian deaf and hard-of-hearing communities.
Thus, I'm a Canadian. And I don't blame Sorenson. It's our government's fault, not Sorenson!
We're not debating whether this is shady or not (Yes Sorenson might be unethical sometimes). Our loss of deaf interpretors, bottom line, the
FAULT STILL LIES WITH CANADA. We're losing out BAD because we're not helping our deaf industry innovate.
P.S. I'm happy we have invented a little wonderful pocket machine called the BlackBerry, and it almost makes up for everything. Almost.
