Editorial #130: Is This Fair? Hearing People Can Get VoiceMail But Deaf People Can’t?

When hearing people call other hearing people and they can’t answer right away, it goes to their voice mail. It doesn’t matter if its AT&T, Sprint or Verizon. Anyone can leave voicemail.

For us deaf people, we can’t leave videomail on Sorenson devices if we use a non-Sorenson device. All the other providers except Sorenson can leave messages without problems. Sorenson is preventing us all from being equal with hearing people or making us second class citizens. This is not functionally equivalent. All ZVRS phones and software can receive and leave messages without problems, but we can’t leave messages on Sorenson devices.

The FCC has received complaints on this and let us hope they’re listening and doing something to make Sorenson do so.

Thanks for listening.

Dr. Z cares about your communication access.

Disclaimer: Dr. Z is currently the Vice-President of Business Development and Outreach at CSDVRS, LLC.