The term “functionally equivalent” means any function that hearing people use when communicating on their phones is also available to deaf and hard of hearing people when they use the relay service. The Z4 is as close to being functionally equivalent–more than any videophone out there.

Comparing a cell phone used by hearing people with a Z4 provided by The Z™ reveals that the Z4 is as close to a cell phone as it possibly can be–in some ways it does more than a cell phone; in other ways it does less (because of the some voice functions that come with a cell phone that does not apply to a videophone designed for deaf and hard of hearing people.)

Let’s look at the basic functions of the Z4….

-point to point video or video through a video interpreter
-one line VCO
-phone directory (for both point-to-point and relay calls) (any calls for hearing people automatically connects you to an interpreter)
-call history–keeps track of incoming calls, outgoing calls, dialed calls and missed calls
-multi party calls–can handle 3 party calls (yourself with 2 other parties)
-recording calls–can record all or part of any video conversation (to be saved or played again later)
-answering machine (you can record your own greeting message; any messages received by either deaf/hard of hearing people or hearing people (through an interpreter) will be forwarded to your pager/email and saved in your ZVRS profile on the web (this way, you never lose a message) (this is our “My Mail” feature.)

Dr. Z challenges any other provider to come up with this list for their videophones.

Having said all this, this gets us close to true functional equivalency and ZVRS is indeed proud to provide this to you!

Dr. Z cares about your communication access.

Disclosure: Dr. Z is a contractor working with CSDVRS on several projects.