Advocates for the Deaf Call for Inmate Calling Reforms

videophone, captioned telephone or an amplified telephone, consumer groups representing the deaf said in comments posted Tuesday in docket 12-375. The facilities also should be required to report data to the commission on phone service available to deaf or hard of hearing inmates, including complaints, technical problems, how much telecommunications access is provided as compared with non-deaf or -hard of hearing inmates, and whether there's access to modern telecommunication equipment, the groups said. The “vast majority” of correctional facilities that provide some telecommunications access for the disabled do so only through slow and antiquated TTYs at nondiscounted calling rates, the groups said. While TTYs are important for some of the deaf, “they are no longer used by most deaf and hard of hearing people. Instead deaf and hard of hearing inmates need access to the more functionally equivalent telecommunications equipment that are used by the majority of deaf and hard of hearing individuals outside of these facilities such as videophones, captioned telephones, and other Internet-based communications.” The groups said they've received "numerous stories about deaf and hard of hearing inmates routinely being denied access to sign language interpreters, closed captioning on televisions, and facing many barriers to telecommunications. The civil rights of deaf and hard of hearing people must not end at the walls of prisons and jails." Jointly submitting the comments were the American Association of the Deaf-Blind, California Coalition of Agencies Serving the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Cerebral Palsy and Deaf Organization, Deaf and Hard of Hearing Consumer Advocacy Network, Deaf Seniors of America, Gallaudet University Technology Access Program, Hearing Loss Association of America, the National Association of the Deaf and Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc. The American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho urged the commission to “exercise the full extent of its authority” to regulate interstate and intrastate ICS rates, in comments posted Tuesday. The Further NPRM considers making permanent interstate rate caps and impose intrastate caps. The Idaho Public Utilities Commission can't regulate ICS rates because the state’s legislature in 1998 prevented the PUC from regulating rates except basic local exchange service, which does not include ICS, the group said.