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Text messaging 911 for Hearing and Speech Impaired

A Britain police agency will become the first jurisdiction in England to offer text messaging for deaf and speech impaired people to contact officers in an emergency.

UNITED KINGDOM - The West Midlands Police will offer text messaging for deaf and speech-impaired people to contact officers in an emergency. Problems have been noted in the past among deaf and speech-impaired people who have tried to reach the police.

Short-message services are used by 98 percent of the hearing impaired in Britain and 85 percent of those said they would want to use the service to reach police, according to a recent poll. The text-messaging service has spurred the interest of other police departments in Britain as well.

In the United States, tests of wireless teletypewriters (TTYs) for emergency 911 calls have shown difficulty in completing 911 calls via wireless-equipped TTYs to some public-safety answering points (PSAPs) that have older TTY equipment and software.