Page "Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990" Paragraph 21

Title IV of the ADA amended the landmark Communications Act of 1934 primarily by adding section.

This section requires that all telecommunications companies in the U. S. take steps to ensure functionally equivalent services for consumers with disabilities, notably those who are deaf or hard of hearing and those with speech impairments.

When Title IV took effect in the early 1990s, it led to installation of public Teletypewriter ( TTY ) machines and other TDDs ( Telecommunications Device for the Deaf ).

Title IV also led to creation, in all 50 States and the District of Columbia, of what were then called dual-party relay services and now are known as Telecommunications Relay Services ( TRS ), such as STS Relay.

Today, many TRS-mediated calls are made over the Internet by consumers who use broadband connections.

Some are Video Relay Service ( VRS ) calls, while others are text calls.

In either variation, communication assistants translate between the signed / typed words of a consumer and the spoken words of others.

In 2006, according to the Federal Communications Commission ( FCC ), VRS calls averaged two million minutes a month.