Typetalk was intro­duced in 1991 and is the national tele­phone relay ser­vice for peo­ple with com­mu­ni­ca­tion dif­fi­cul­ties.  The ser­vice is man­aged by RNID and funded by BT.

It is avail­able 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  Calls are charged at stan­dard tele­phone rates (depend­ing on the ser­vice provider)

A text­phone is the equip­ment that a deaf or speech-impaired cus­tomer would use to type and read con­ver­sa­tions with fam­ily, friends or an organ­i­sa­tion, like the HA, to com­mu­ni­cate via a phone line.

A Text­phone user sim­ply dials 18001 fol­lowed by the full tele­phone num­ber of the per­son they wish to call.  The call will be diverted directly to another Text­phone or if the call is answered by a hear­ing per­son a Typetalk Relay Assis­tant will join the line to relay the call. The text user can type or speak their con­ver­sa­tion to the hear­ing per­son, the hear­ing per­son will speak their part of the con­ver­sa­tion and the Typetalk Relay Assis­tant will type exactly what is being said.

The same hap­pens in reverse.  It is either text­phone to text­phone or if a hear­ing per­son wishes to call a text­phone user they would dial 18002 fol­lowed by the full tele­phone num­ber and a Typetalk Relay Assis­tant will join the line to help with the call.  This would allow HAIL advi­sors to call a cus­tomer back, if required.

If another hear­ing per­son answers the call, an Oper­a­tor will not be involved and the call will con­tinue as normal.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion or instruc­tions about this ser­vice please visit the RNID Typetalk website.