As part of a July 18 announcement in the Federal Register on a new proposed ruling, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)—the government agency regulating interstate communications by radio, TV, satellite, cable, and wire—has indicated an interest in utilizing automated speech recognition (ASR) as an alternative to live captioning assistants (CAs) for Internet Protocol Captioned Telephone Service (IP CTS), making the use of CAs optional.  

IP CTS is a service that allows deaf, hard-of-hearing, and deaf-blind individuals to communicate via captioned telephones. When an IP CTS user places a call, he/she activates the captioning on their end, alerting a CA to join the call. The CA then communicates what the hearing party says into a speech recognition program, which transcribes those words into captions; some CAs may type captions manually.  

As stated in the announcement: The Commission believes that the primary goals for the IP CTS program should be: (1) To make communications services available to individuals with communications disabilities that are functionally equivalent to communications services used by individuals without such disabilities….88. Goal #1: Functional Equivalence. Given the requirement in section 225 of the Act for the Commission to ensure, to the extent possible, the availability of TRS for people with hearing or speech disabilities that is functionally equivalent to voice telephone services used by people without such disabilities.  

In April 2011, consumer groups suggested that functional equivalence be defined as enabling ‘‘[p]ersons receiving or making relay calls . . . to participate equally in the entire conversation with the other party or parties and . . . experience the same activity, emotional context, purpose, operation, work, service, or role (function) within the call as if the call is between individuals who are not using relay services on any end of the call.’’ The Commission seeks comment on the extent to which this is an appropriate definition of functional equivalence for the purpose of defining this performance goal.