At the time of writing the full trial is in its early stages, so it is not possible to comment on the long term usability of the system, which is ultimately more important than enthusiastic early reactions to a new 'toy'. The future of the system described depends on the results of the trial, and if these are positive on the options for cost effective manufacture. The recent announcement of at least two general purpose PSTN videophones using essentially similar technology indicates that this price goal is achievable in a mass- market item. However, these systems are not ideally adapted for deaf peoples needs since the image coding algorithms were not optimised for sign language, they have no text facilities, limited visual indications of call status, and use up valuable channel capacity to provide the audio channel which is usually not useful to deaf people. It may be that some adaptation of these systems is possible however.
Informal tests indicate that the picture quality is at least usable for sign language.
7- 9 April 1992. Sign Language Phone Contributed by Carlton D. Fuerst at 15 Sep 1994. In a photograph, a signer is wearing a glove which sense the hand position, but it is not clear whether this has anything to do with the sign language phone. There was a tendency for younger people to take the sign language phone more readily. There is also some information in the article about the importance of sign language to the deaf and a joke about throwing a conductor from a train.