OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Hearing or speech impaired persons in Metro Vancouver and surrounding areas may now communicate with emergency services using Text with 9-1-1 (T9-1-1).
On Tuesday, E-Comm, the emergency communication centre that provides 9-1-1 service to the region, became the first Canadian public safety answering point to introduce T9-1-1 service for the deaf, deafened, hard of hearing or speech impaired (DHHSI) community.
DHHSI members in E-Comm's service area must first register with their wireless service provider in order to access the service. When a DHHSI person requires 9-1-1 services, they dial 9-1-1 on their cell phone. There is no need for a caller to speak or hear, as the emergency call centre will automatically receive a notification to initiate a conversation by text message.
The CRTC announced that the City of Calgary is expected to make the Text with 9-1-1 service available to the DHHSI community in its region starting March 24, 2014.
“The availability of Text with 9-1-1 represents a significant advancement in emergency communications and will improve the safety of those who are hearing or speech impaired”, said CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais, in a statement. “The CRTC congratulates E-Comm 9-1-1 as well as the City of Calgary’s emergency call centre for moving so quickly in making the changes required to support this service. We now call upon all emergency call centres across the country to work with their respective governments and expeditiously offer this important service in their areas.”
As part of the announcement, the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) encouraged all members of the DHHSI community across Canada to register for the service, even though the service is not yet available nation-wide. The site www.textwith911.ca contains details about how to register with a service provider for T9-1-1 and when the service will become available in other areas of the country.
"On behalf of Canada's wireless industry, I want to commend E-Comm for being the first emergency centre to implement Text with 9-1-1," said CWTA president and CEO, Bernard Lord, in the announcement. "This service is truly critical to those within the DHHSI community in Canada, and I look forward to the continued roll-out of the service across the country in the months ahead."
But telecom consultant Mark Goldberg wrote in a blog post that he is “not convinced this is a service that truly meets the needs of the community it is intended to serve.”
In addition to the pre-registration component, Goldberg is critical of the lengthy list of instructions that a DHHSI person must follow in order to place a call to 9-1-1 services. He also points out that some phones, particularly older devices, are not compatible with the requirement to keep a voice call active while simultaneously opening up a texting session.
Goldberg also questioned why the CRTC appeared to disregard a warning from the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) in a letter last week that cautioned that many public safety answering points (PSAPs) are not yet ready to accept communication by text because they have yet to upgrade from “legacy 9-1-1 systems to the new Internet Protocol (IP) data network to provide services such as T9-1-1 to the deaf, deafened, hard of hearing or speech impaired (DHHSI) community.”
The letter also references an earlier request from PSAPs that the CRTC consider rolling out T9-1-1 by province rather than by region "to ensure that members of the DHHSI community were assured of service in all areas of each province."
“The text to 9-1-1 solution appears to be a solution that sounded better in the design than it turned out in practice”, Goldberg writes. “Was there sufficient consultation with the user community and consideration of broad user adoption? How well did this solution score in focus groups considering user interface alternatives? Should people need a training course and have to invest in new mobile handsets in order to make emergency calls?”
The service will only be available to those in the DHHSI community who register their cell phones for the service through their wireless carrier. Voice calling remains the only way to communicate with 9-1-1 services for a person that is not deaf, deafened, hard of hearing or with speech impairment. Text messages sent directly to the digits ‘9-1-1’ do not reach emergency services, though Text with 9-1-1 for the public at large is expected to be deployed at a later date.
The unique Canadian Text with 9-1-1 service was developed by the CRTC Interconnection Steering Committee Emergency Services Working Group, comprised of members from emergency services, telecommunications service providers, vendors and other stakeholders, including CWTA. T9-1-1 was trialed with volunteers from the DHHSI community in the spring and summer of 2012 in Vancouver, Toronto, Peel Region and Montreal.
– Lesley Hunter
