Telephone Calls by the Hearing Impaired in Bogotá: a first for Latin America
By Hernando Ayala Melgarejo (disnetco@yahoo.com)
Nobody in Colombia ever imagined that deaf people could talk on the phone and even fewer could imagine them listening back. The impact was enormous for those non-hearing impaired that were surprised when they received their first calls from deaf friends, users, or clients. The calls were communicated through a Transfer Center system established in Bogotá as the first Latin American example of public access to telephone systems for people with hearing impairments or speech problems.
The more than 4000 calls received in the first three months the Transfer Center was in operation have demonstrated the several ways the users want to use the system. Presently, within the city, Bogotá has 23 public telephone access locations for the deaf community, the hearing or the speech impaired being used to further the possibilities for more than a thousand of them to participate socially or for business.
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