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UK to Let Deaf People Call 999 by Text Message LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's first scheme which lets deaf and speech-impaired people report emergencies by text message on their mobile phone was unveiled on Thursday. "We hope to provide a quality service to a large group of people who in the past have had real difficulty in making contact with their local police," Max Corney, West Midlands Police's IT communications manager said in a statement. A survey carried out with the Birmingham Institute of the Deaf (BID) showed 98 percent of hearing-impaired people used SMS text messaging. Most of those wanted to be able to use text messages to contact the police, fire or ambulance services, the poll found. The project was the brainchild of deaf administration worker Tim Humpherson who recognized the problems people had with the existing British 999 emergency telephone service. "As a deaf person I recognize the missing link which is crucial for deaf communities to be able to contact the emergency services," he said. "Many deaf people already send and receive text messages extensively on their mobile phones." One in seven British people, or about 8.6 million people, has some form of hearing problem, with about 140,000 of them profoundly deaf, the British Deaf Association said. "Text messaging has revolutionized the way deaf people communicate on the move," a BDA spokesman said. Britain has seen a boom in text messaging this year, with 1.3 billion messages sent in March compared to 864 million the year before, the Mobile Data Association said in a recent report. Technology |