Through our many services to the community, we have been fortunate to have individuals share their experiences, such that NVRC has an institutional memory of comments, complaints, concerns, wishes and wants. While Section 501 and 504 are focused on the person and how a person's particular disabilities should be accommodated in a specific setting, Section 508 is focused on technology and how well a federal agency, vendor, or recipient of certain federal funds, provides access to technologies to its employees and the disabled members of the public it serves. Section 1194.4 Definitions NVRC supports the proposed definition for TTY and notes that the definition should be drafted and construed to be consistent with the Board's ADA Accessibility Guidelines, and those under the Telecommunications Act Accessibility Guidelines. Consistency is necessary to prevent chaos, and an unintentional circumvention of the purpose of Section 508, as amended. General Requirements NVRC supports the position that information systems with a requirement for a response in a pre-set time exclude the majority of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing populations.
Telephone automated voice menus are on the increase, sadly, in the name of efficiency.
For a TTY user, the process of using voice menu systems is very labor-intensive. The voice message prompts generally come too fast for the TRS staff to type the information to the TTY user in a timely and accurate fashion. As is the case most of the time, there is a disconnect on the line. Too much time has elapsed because of the delay in responding. Furthermore, for those reading a fast-moving TTY screen, having to remembering the choices and make a decision to inform the TRS staff is extremely difficult.