Burnaby is well represented on a national board responsible for a new service that will allow deaf Canadians to use sign language to communicate with non-sign-language users over the phone.
Called video relay service (VRS), the service will connect deaf users with other people through an operator who can interpret between sign language and spoken language.
It has been available in the U.S. for about a decade, but the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) only decided in April 2014 that it must be offered in Canada because not doing so is discriminatory.
The permanent board recently appointed to oversee the implementation of VRS country wide includes two directors with Burnaby connections: executive director of the locally-headquartered Neil Squire Society, Gary Birch, and local advocate Lisa Anderson-Kellett.
“I’m honoured to be able to carry on with the VRS work and observe the system of actual VRS services being implemented,” Anderson-Kellett told the NOW via text. “I have a front row view.”
As a former member of the BCVRS committee – a grassroots B.C. group that has lobbied for the nationwide service since 2008 – Anderson-Kellett has been a vocal advocate.
Along with more than 300 other deaf people in B.C. and Alberta, she took part in an 18-month VRS pilot project between 2010 and 2012, and told the NOW in an October 2012 interview that losing the service when the pilot was over was "like going back in the dark ages.”
The national board has been tasked with selecting the technology for the new service, ensuring sign-language operators are qualified to adequately relay conversations, creating campaigns to raise awareness about VRS and protecting the privacy of VRS users and the confidentiality of relayed conversations.
The annual costs for the service have been capped by the CRTC at $30 million.
One important first step by the board was the appointment of executive director Sue Decker, a former AT&T manager and a consultant to many U.S. VRS companies.
“She’s kind of drinking from a fire hydrant right now,” Birch told the NOW, “because there’s a lot of pressure, as you can imagine, to get this up and going.”
