Speech to Speech Service

A new, free telephone service is now available to people with speech disabilities in the U.S.A., Sweden and Australia, thanks to Bob Segalman, Ph.D., of Sacramento, California. Called Speech to Speech (STS), this service provides communication assistants (CAs) for people who have difficulty being understood by the public on the telephone.

In the United States, STS is provided through the TTY relay. As many people with speech disabilities have difficulty typing, however, STS has the advantage of allowing them to communicate by voice.

To use STS, people with speech disabilities can dial toll-free to reach a trained CA who is familiar with many speech patterns and has excellent language-recognition skills. This CA makes telephone calls for them and repeats their words exactly in a three-way calling environment. Every month, users in the U.S. make about 6,000 calls nationally.

Many STS users have disabilities such as Parkinson’s disease or ALS. Others stutter or have had a laryngectomy. Segalman himself has cerebral palsy and developed the idea of STS through his own experiences communicating by phone. Now, he finds telephone use much less challenging.

Perhaps Canada will follow suit and work to establish a similar telephone access service for our citizens with speech disabilities.

For more information about Speech to Speech, call 1-800-854-7784 and ask for Dr. Bob Segalman, or visit www.stsnews.com.