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13.1 Relay services

Clause 13.1 on relay services need revision
Current text in EN v 3.2.1:

13.1 Relay services requirements

13.1.1 General (informative)
Relay services enable users of different modes of communication e.g. text, sign, speech, to interact remotely through ICT with two-way communication by providing conversion between the modes of communication, normally by a human operator.
It is best practice to meet the applicable relay service requirements of ETSI ES 202 975 [i.5].

13.1.2 Text relay services
Where ICT is intended to provide a text relay service, the text relay service shall enable text users and speech users to interact by providing conversion between the two modes of communication.

13.1.3 Sign relay services
Where ICT is intended to provide a sign relay service, the sign relay service shall enable sign language users and speech users to interact by providing conversion between the two modes of communication.
NOTE: Sign relay services are also sometimes referred to as sign language relay services or video relay services.

13.1.4 Lip-reading relay services
Where ICT is intended to provide a lip-reading relay service, the lip-reading service shall enable lip-readers and voice telephone users to interact by providing conversion between the two modes of communication.

13.1.5 Captioned telephony services
Where ICT is intended to provide a captioned telephony service, the captioned telephony service shall assist a deaf or hard of hearing user in a spoken dialogue by providing text captions translating the incoming part of the conversation.

13.1.6 Speech to speech relay services
Where ICT is intended to provide a speech to speech relay service, the speech to speech relay service shall enable telephone users who are speech impaired, have limited cognitive, language and learning abilities, as well as any other user, to communicate by providing assistance between them.

Proposal for changes:

  1. In 13.1.1 change "normally by a human operator" to "by a human operator or by other means" because AI is nowadays a good alternative to human operations for some kinds of relay action, and there are hybrid services, using AI under monitoring including preparedness to switch to human in case of problems.

  2. In 13.1.1 change "two-way communication" to "continuous bidirectional communication".

  3. In 13.1.2 change "enable text users" to "enable text users using RTT" because sentence-wise text messaging relay services have shown to give so low user satisfaction that they should not be provided. RTT is needed.

  4. In 13.1.3 change the title from "Sign relay service" to "Video relay service", and the two occurrences on the first line from "sign relay service" to "video relay service". Also in the note change places of "sign relay services" and "video relay services"

  5. In 13.1.4 change "voice telephone users" to "users of continuous bidirectional voice communication"
    (it may also be questioned if this type of relay service is provided sufficiently commonly to be included in this clause, I have only heard about it from UK. Delete?)

  6. In 13.1.5, Can we change "telephone" to "voice communication". "Telephone" looks outdated. But "Captioned telephony" is a common term. I propose a change and an explaining note.

  7. In and after 13.1.6, make small changes as shown in the new text below, and insert one more type "Cognitive support service" for providing memory support and support for other cognitive variations.

  8. In 13.1.1 add: "Relay services are often providing options to work only in one specified direction of communication. Total conversation is often regarded a suitable feature for access to relay services because of the opportunity to combine a multitude of communication modalities"

Edited by Michael Pluke