RFC 3351 (rfc3351) - Page 3 of 17

User Requirements for the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) in Support of Deaf, Hard of Hearing and Speech-impaired Individuals

RFC 3351   SIP for Deaf, Hard of Hearing and Speech Impaired August 2002


   The terms Abilities and Preferences apply to both caller and
   call-recipient.

   Relay Service:  A third-party or intermediary that enables
   communications between deaf, hard of hearing and speech-impaired
   people, and people without hearing or speech-impairment.  Relay
   Services form a subset of the activities of Transcoding Services (see
   definition).

   Transcoding Services:  A human or automated third party acting as an
   intermediary in any session between two other User Agents (being a
   User Agent itself), and transcoding one stream into another (e.g.,
   voice to text or vice versa).

   Textphone:  Sometimes called a TTY (teletypewriter), TDD
   (telecommunications device for the deaf) or a minicom, a textphone
   enables a deaf, hard of hearing or speech-impaired person to place a
   call to a telephone or another textphone.  Some textphones use the
   V.18[3] protocol as a standard for communication with other textphone
   communication protocols world-wide.

   User:  A deaf, hard of hearing or speech-impaired individual.  A user
   is otherwise referred to as a person or individual, and users are
   referred to as people.

   Note:  For the purposes of this document, a deaf, hard of hearing, or
   speech-impaired person is an individual who chooses to use SIP
   because it can minimize or eliminate constraints in using common
   communication devices.  As SIP promises a total communication
   solution for any kind of person, regardless of ability and
   preference, there is no attempt to specifically define deaf, hard of
   hearing or speech-impaired in this document.

2. Introduction

   The background for this document is the recent development of SIP[2]
   and SIP-based communications, and a growing awareness of deaf, hard
   of hearing and speech-impaired issues in the technical community.

   The SIP capacity to simplify setting up, managing and tearing down
   communication sessions between all kinds of User Agents has specific
   implications for deaf, hard of hearing and speech-impaired
   individuals.








Charlton, et al.             Informational