Via a leak, I just got this announcement from Janet Bailey, president of Sign Language Associates (SLA):

Interpreters: 

I am writing to formally announce that SLA, VLI and GoAmerica have merged into one new full service company.  You may remember that in January of this year, GoAmerica acquired Verizon’s text and video relay products (under the IP-Relay brand) and then merged with Hands On VRS.  Now, as one larger company, our combined years of experience, our technical expertise and our strong relationships within the community position us to become #1 in community interpreting, #1 in text relay, and #2 in video relay.

Clearly, in the past few years, the way interpreting services are provided has changed in significant ways.  Deaf consumers face increased difficulty in getting interpreters for face-to-face communication needs; some communities throughout the country cannot locate local interpreters at all.  By coming together, we believe that we can improve support for interpreters and services for Deaf communities; as GoAmerica we can best position ourselves to respond to the changing landscape in the interpreting field. 

With this merger, we combine pioneering leadership, top-notch quality, and technical capability.  SLA and VLI provide expertise in community interpreting that will allow GoAmerica to strike a balance between VRS and community interpreting.  SLA and VLI managers have already begun working with GoAmerica managers and interpreters to improve working conditions for interpreters by offering an array of interpreting settings they can work in.  GoAmerica’s technical expertise allows SLA and VLI to develop nascent programs in remote video interpreting and CART services to meet the ever growing demands for communication access.

Finally, most relevant to developing interpreters and students, we will continue to establish programs for interpreter’s skill and career development across the gamut of our work.  Mentorship programs, coaching and certification readiness, ASL/Spanish language combinations, specialty interpreting proficiencies; these are all areas of endeavor that the combined capabilities of this new company allow us to further develop. The talent and energy of all of the good people who will now work together will mean GoAmerica becomes the premiere company for interpreters across the country.  In that way, and through the company’s array of other products and services, we believe that we will be the first choice of Deaf and Hard of Hearing consumers for all their communication needs.

You will hear more from us in coming weeks about exciting product and service developments.  Interpreters will see enhanced employment options as we develop our organization to take advantage of the best of all three organizations.  Please contact us if you have questions or if you’re interested in becoming part of our exciting team!

During my senior year of high school, there were only a handful of students in my Latin III class. We’d banter and write stories - in Latin, of course - and do our studies while our teacher taught Latin I and II in another part of the classroom.

I got to know my classmates pretty well. And so it was a shock when one of my classmates - let’s call him Mike to protect his identity - showed up with a lightly slashed wrist. The cuts were not deep enough to draw blood, but deep enough to be noticeable. I asked him what happened; he made a glib comment about some accident or another, and I forgot about it.

Several days later, he showed up with a fresh set of cuts alongside both wrists. Not across the wrist, but down from his wrist toward his elbows. Again, the cuts weren’t deep, but they were made with some sharp instrument and the skin around the cuts were pink. Scabs had already covered the cuts where the skin had been broken.

I can’t remember if I asked about the new cuts, but I remember thinking that these cuts weren’t by accident but by design.

Mike was a cutter.

Over the following several days and weeks, new sets of cuts appeared on Mike’s arms. The cuts became deeper and deeper, drawing blood more and more. And yet he’d almost proudly show us the cuts on his forearms. I know I must’ve remarked on them, and so did our other classmates. Mike brushed away our concerns and comments, yet seemed to relish them.

One day, he showed up with cuts so deep that blood had been drawn along almost the entire length of his forearm from wrist to nearly his elbow. Scabs had just begun to cover most of the cuts, and the cuts that hadn’t yet been covered were red and gaping.

That was it. My sign language interpreter and I signed to each other - “What can we do?” “Maybe I could leave class and tell a counselor?” “Yes, yes, do that!” During a lull in class, my interpreter discreetly left the class. After a few minutes, she came back. “I told a counselor, and she’ll be here in a few minutes,” she signed quietly to me. Several minutes later, a counselor poked her head into the classroom, and asked Mike to come with her and to please bring his stuff with him.

For several days, he didn’t come back to school.

I felt horrible. I felt like I had instigated some crisis in his life. Was he still alive? Was he in a hospital with tubes running up his arm? Was he in a mental institution somewhere? I waited further news with bated breath and a good measure of trepidation.

One day, Mike was back in class. And he had a young girl - our age - by his side. I’d never met this girl before. She stayed by his side all day that day as he went to different classes at school. And he didn’t have any new sets of scars since that last, deep set of cuts - which by then were healing normally. We all didn’t speak about his absence, other than to greet him back. And from that point on, no new set of cuts again appeared on his wrists.

One day several weeks later, the counselor stopped the interpreter in the hall and thanked her for alerting her. As discreetly as she could, the counselor explained that Mike was having problems with his parents over a girl he liked, and cutting his wrists was a mix of relieving stress and a call for attention.

Flash forward twenty-two years (geez, has it been that long?). I recently got back in touch with Mike, and a couple days ago, I emailed him asking about the cutting. I explained that I was the one who reported him 22 years ago, and asked what had happened. He responded thanking me for my concern, and explained that he wasn’t suidical - just experimenting with different pain thresholds. He said the counselor was satisfied with that explanation and let him go.

I’m not too sure about that explanation, but I agree with Mike - he certainly wasn’t suidical. Whether he was just experimenting or not, it almost certainly was a call for attention and a way to alleviate his stress.

If you’re a cutter or if you suspect someone close to you is a cutter, here’s an excellent resource over at KidsHealth.org about cutting. It explains that cutting is a way of dealing with trouble, stress, or depression, and can become compulsive behavior. And it lists a few anecdotes as well as ways of getting help.

I’m glad my interpreter and I were courageous enough to get help for Mike. And I hope you can have the courage to do the same for yourself or others.

In the late 1950’s, a Virginia judge upheld a law declaring that blacks and whites could not marry each other. He sentenced Richard and Mildred Loving to one year in jail or 25 years of exile from Virginia for the simple crime of marrying each other - a black woman and a white man.

The Loving couple fought the ruling all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1967, the Supreme Court justices unanimously decreed that Virginia and numerous other state laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional.

Richard and Mildred Loving have long been heros of mine. They didn’t take up the marriage torch for political reasons or to make a point to others. Rather, the Lovings did it for love. I admire them for that, and for succeeding in legitimizing their love in the eyes of the law for the most noble of reasons.

Richard Loving died in 1975. Last Friday, Mildred Loving passed away at the age of 68.

It is my sincere hope and desire that, one day soon, my partner — the man I love — and I will be able to marry. And that our two daughters would have two fathers who are married to each other. Not because it makes health insurance easier. Not because my retirement would then cover my boyfriend. Not because it would make it much, much easier to make sure one father can still keep our daughters should the other father pass away. No. It’s because we love each other.

Currently, gay men and women can marry in Massachusetts. But their marriages would not be recognized in most states. If my partner and I were to marry in Boston and then return to Maryland, little would have changed. Except, of course, for our love - which would still not be legitimized by the state nor the Federal government.

I love these thoughts from Mildred Loving, and I wanted to share these with you in closing. These thoughts are truly what loving is about.

Loving for All

By Mildred Loving

Prepared for Delivery on June 12, 2007,
The 40th Anniversary of the Loving vs. Virginia Announcement

When my late husband, Richard, and I got married in Washington, DC in 1958, it wasn’t to make a political statement or start a fight. We were in love, and we wanted to be married.

We didn’t get married in Washington because we wanted to marry there. We did it there because the government wouldn’t allow us to marry back home in Virginia where we grew up, where we met, where we fell in love, and where we wanted to be together and build our family. You see, I am a woman of color and Richard was white, and at that time people believed it was okay to keep us from marrying because of their ideas of who should marry whom.

When Richard and I came back to our home in Virginia, happily married, we had no intention of battling over the law. We made a commitment to each other in our love and lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match. Isn’t that what marriage is?

Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the “crime” of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.

We left, and got a lawyer. Richard and I had to fight, but still were not fighting for a cause. We were fighting for our love.

Though it turned out we had to fight, happily Richard and I didn’t have to fight alone. Thanks to groups like the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, and so many good people around the country willing to speak up, we took our case for the freedom to marry all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And on June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that, “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men,” a “basic civil right.”

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry.

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

The Internet loves April Fool’s Day jokes. Especially Google. Here’re some (bogus) announcements from Google and its various projects thus far today:

• 
• Google has teamed with Virgin to create Project Virgle — an ambitious plan toward the first human colony on Mars! Coming soon: a Relay Service call-center on Mars.
• Google Docs (an on-line wordprocessor) now has a “new airplane” option under its File menu that allows you to print out and fly a paper airplane with Google’s logo. While this is indeed an April’s Fool Joke, it’s a nice, legit feature — so enjoy it while it lasts!
• A wake-up feature via Google Calendar that features progressively more vigorous means to wake up an user — starting with SMS text messages and cumulating in “more coercive means” like tipping water-filled baskets and even bed-flipping. Very useful for waking up us deaf folks, I daresay.
• A new Gmail feature that allows you to back-date your emails as far back as April 1st, 2004 (the day they, not so ironically, launched Gmail). Very nice for when you forgot a special event and can claim that the email got delayed — and then the email arrives, correctly back-dated with the “old date,” in that person’s inbox!
• Google Australia has launched gDay, a search service that will allow you to search “future sites” up to a day in advance. You could peruse newspaper articles that haven’t even been written yet but will be on the Internet tomorrow, future sports scores, whether you’ll have an interpreter in your class tomorrow, and more. The possibilities are endless.
• Google Talk makes it possible to save energy by adding a translation feature that abbreviates words and reduces the vowels and consonants in your conversation. Vry usful fr tlkg w/ ur bss w/o ur intpr nd gttg ur pt acrs.
• Google Books has added a “stratch and sniff” feature. I wonder if Google Classifieds will add a new car smell feature for its car listings …

Google ain’t the only one having fun with this. Below is a scattering of websites also offering exclusive April’s Fool Day features — I’ll update this as I hear (well, see) of more. In turn, let me know in the comments if you see any that aren’t listed, and I’ll add them as well!

• A.viary.com, a photo manipulation website, has added Dodo, a nice feature where you can upload a photo, designate certain areas of it, select a few options, and have it be aged appropriately. See your favorite enemy be aged 20, 30, 40 years! Retro-age your car 250,000 years in the past and see it turn into a Flintstone-esque foot-operated conveyance device! See young Michael Jackson as he would be without plastic surgery, or as he is with plastic surgery!
• TechCrunch, my favorite tech blog (and the source of my knowledge of many of these hoaxes - thanks, TechCrunch!), is suing Facebook for $25,000,000 because Facebook constantly lets others know via status feeds what Michael Arrington, TechCrunch’s well-known founder, rents or buys at different sites like BlockBuster. Funny only if you know who Michael Arrington is and have been reading his blogs all along.
• Google Sightseeing, which is not affiliated with Google itself but blogs about Google Maps and Google Earth, has announced that Google Maps / Earth has added an x-ray feature that allows you to look INSIDE buildings — like the Pentagon! I guess our Video Relay conversations will no longer be confidential anymore.
• Weebly, an useful online service where you can create your own websites, has announced that it will terminate service on May 1st. I’m not sure if this is an April Fool’s Day joke. I hope it’s a joke. Gulp.
• Download Squad is moving to Planet of Internet. Um. I don’t get the humor.

More coming soon - keep checking back!

• (8:53am) Wunderground, my favorite weather website, gets into the action and announces that research conclusively proves that there is a link between global warming and increased numbers of hurricanes. Said research was done via consulting oujia boards, crystal and magic-8 balls, and even channeling.
• (9:10am) Daveynin reports that CSD is acquiring DeafRead!
• (10:15am) Download Squad now reports that Microsoft will be unveiling a new Developer Fitness program with exercise videos by Microsoft’s CEO. Just be careful not to boot your computer while doing those kicks.
• (April 2nd) Blogger ThinkGeek breathlessly reports that there is a new Wii game and controller, Super Pii Pii Brothers where you strap on a Pii and try to, ahem, pee into toilets with varying levels of difficulty.  Gives a totally new meaning to “joysticks!”  (Thanks, Daveynin.)

I did a Google Maps search for “GetGo Gas” in the DC area — and the results weren’t quite what I expected.

Instead of getting a list of GetGo gas stations owned by Giant Eagle (more on that later), I got a politically-laden list of what some people may think are the usual suspects engaged in an on-going program of acquiring gas elsewhere:

1. The White House
2. The Federal Bureau of Investigations
3. Federal News Service
4. Pew Forum on Religion and Public
5. Congressman John Conyers Jr.
6. Washington Post
7. US Executive Mansion
8. Democratic National Committee
9. US Government: Public Affairs
10. Libertarian National Committee

Experimenting with different combinations of these words (”go get gas,” “goget gas”, and “get go gas”) brings up different rankings with different individuals and agencies, including Union Station, National Reform - Marijuana Laws, National Press, Senator Tom Harkin, Republican National Committee, and other innocent (or not so innocent) parties.

And why was I looking for GetGo gas stations? The Giant Eagle chain of grocery stores has an excellent FuelPerks program where, for each $50 of groceries you purchase through your Giant Eagle Advantage card, you save 10 cents on each gallon of gas you purchase at Giant Eagle and GetGo gas stations. After a particularly productive series of shopping sprees, we were able to get gas for something like $1.39 per gallon (down from $3.25 per gallon).

Can’t beat that. Unless another grocery store offers a similar program. Or, better yet, perhaps one of these politically-linked organizations offers a steeper discount? Hmm.

Several days ago, I blogged about my concerns with GoAmerica outsourcing a chunk of its text relay services to the Philippines. Afterwards, I had a very pleasant and eye-opening videophone conversation with Gerald “Jerry” Nelson, Director of Regulatory and Strategic Affairs for GoAmerica / HOVRS. That, in addition, to some of the counterpoint comments to my recent blog post, has given me a better perspective on this issue — and I hope that this blog post will help inform many others as well.

During my conversation with Jerry, I told him that I’d been using IP-Relay’s text services for years — via the Internet, via instant messaging, and via its “My IP Relay Number” personal phone number. I told him I’d tried out numerous other text-based relay services, and had always come back to IP-Relay because of its consistency and high quality services. And knowing that GoAmerica now owned IP-Relay, I asked him what GoAmerica would do to assure quality services for IP-Relay’s text-based services.

Jerry then dropped a bombshell on me: a good chunk of IP-Relay’s text services had already been routed through the same call center in the Philippines for the past three years! Back when MCI was operating IP-Relay, it opened a call center in the Philippines. This move was not widely publicized because MCI wanted to minimize the same concerns I shared in my recent blog post. I had just told Jerry that I was happy with IP-Relay’s high quality services, and it turns out some of that was indeed through the Philippines call center!

Let me start at the beginning — or more than fifteen years ago when national relay services first began. The various telecommunication companies recognized that accents and regional dialects could cause communication problems. It was quite jarring for hearing customers in, say, California to hear a relay operator using a mid-western accent. Likewise for New Yorkers hearing Southern accents. And regional dialects meant that different operators might use different words to mean the same thing. These telecommunication companies hired people to work with relay operators to smooth out their accents and regional dialects, and complaints about accents and dialects decreased. Nowadays, relatively few complaints are received about accents, especially compared to the volume of calls being made.

When MCI decided to open a call center for text relay services in the Philippines, they considered several advantages: the Philippines had a modern culture much like that of the United States, and English is spoken there almost as commonly as the native language (and in fact is not considered a “second language” there). And, of course, cost savings had to be considered — opening this call center would help MCI remain competitive and keep revenues high. When the Philippines call center opened, they conducted the same trainings as conducted at US-based call centers to smooth out any accents or dialects the operators may have. And deaf callers like me (and perhaps hearing callers as well) had no idea that some of their calls were being routed though relay operators living in the Philippines for the past three years!

A month ago, GoAmerica installed a tool to cut back on international calls, a vast majority of which was being used as part of fraud schemes upon unwary businesses and people. This tool had much success in preventing these fraudulent calls, but a side effect was a much less call volume being experienced at its call center. Numerous relay agents now sat idle. And so, a business decision was made to downsize (but not eliminate) the call centers. As Jerry said, this had a negative financial impact on GoAmerica, but preventing fraud calls in the best interest of relay users was the right thing to do.

A side note: text relay calls being made as part of State relay contracts continue to be routed through the Memphis and California call centers and not through the Philippines. And all Video Relay Services are still being provided entirely within the United States. In addition, according to Jerry, GoAmerica’s acquisitions and merger has made it the nation’s largest provider of text relay services and the second largest VRS provider (behind Sorenson).

I don’t know about you, but I definitely feel better about GoAmerica’s plans.  And yes, I definitely plan on continuing to use IP-Relay’s text relay services.

According to a recent Modesto Bee newspaper article, GoAmerica has begun outsourcing its Internet relay services to a new call center in the Philippines.

As I explained in a recent blog post, GoAmerica operates the popular i711 relay service as well as a number of other state-based relay services, and had taken over Verizon’s relay service. In addition, GoAmerica recently merged with Hands On Video Relay Service (HOVRS). As a result, GoAmerica is now one of the largest relay service providers in the nation.

As part of this outsourcing process, and according to the Modesto Bee article, GoAmerica will be giving layoff notices to hundreds of relay operators and staff at the Riverbank, California call center. GoAmerica will begin routing its Internet-based relay calls through the new call center in the Philippines. At this point, this only seems to affect Internet-based relay calls made through GoAmerica’s services. That is, you’re making an Internet-based relay call when you make text relay calls via i711’s webpage or make calls via instant messaging through one of GoAmerica’s services. Video relay calls are not affected (yet?).

So, it’s not good news that a large provider like GoAmerica has begun the process toward outsourcing a significant number of relay operator jobs outside the United States. This may cause a significant impact on how deaf and hearing people interact with each other through the telephone. And I wonder how GoAmerica will maintain the quality of relay calls when using operators that are based outside the country. I’m not familiar enough with relay call procedures to know whether “Deaf English” is translated / transliterated into smooth spoken English, but I’m uncertain this would happen at a call center outside the United States. Lastly, hearing people and businesses are already wary of getting calls from telemarketers as well as scam calls through a relay service. I fear that businesses will hang up at a much greater rate when they receive relay calls from outside the country.

I use Internet-based relay calls quite a bit — in fact, about the same amount as my video relay calls. I often use Verizon’s IP-Relay services via instant messaging on my Palm Treo, or through its webpage interface. And guess what? Since GoAmerica owns these Verizon services, that means soon I’ll have a relay operator who’s based in the Philippines.

I don’t know about you, but if this affects the quality of my relay service then I may start frequenting a different relay service.

Since I haven’t received my Ojo videophone yet, I wasn’t aware that the Ojo network is now down. But I just received an email from the CEO of Snap!VRS explaining that the Ojo manufacturer and operator of the Ojo network had been “forced to shut down operations.” I’m including a copy of the email below.

Makes me wonder about other videophones that are currently out on the market or soon will be released. I believe the Sorenson network is owned and operated by Sorenson itself (correct me if I’m wrong), but what about other videophones like Viable’s VPAD that will soon be released?  (Update: Viable owns the VPAD’s network; see email at the bottom of this post from a Viable rep.)  Reminds me about all the difficulties that Sidekick users have been having because their Sidekicks were running on the Danger network instead of Tmobile’s own network.

Here’s the letter from Snap!VRS’s CEO. I hope those nifty Ojo videophones will be working soon and not destined to be scrap metal.

Dear Snap!VRS Customers,

Today, I am writing to give you facts about the current Ojo network disruption, but most importantly to assure you that Snap!VRS has acted, and will continue to act, with the highest degree of integrity and ethics. I’m sure you are well aware by now that the Ojo network is down. Please be assured that Snap!VRS is committed to you, our valued customer, and we are doing everything in our control to best serve your needs. This is a frustrating experience for all of us.

Yesterday morning, WorldGate Communications, Inc. (“WorldGate”), a public company that manufactures the Ojo video phone and operates the Ojo network that enables you to make calls, issued an SEC filing stating that they have been forced to shut down operations “as a first step to winding down its business” as a result of a dispute over payments supposedly owed by “its largest customer.” Although WorldGate did not identify the customer by name, we want you to know that this is a direct reference to us, Snap!VRS.

While WorldGate would like to direct the blame for its present financial troubles on us, the blame does not reside with Snap!VRS and it is misleading for WorldGate to suggest so. In actuality, we are current on all payments and do not owe WorldGate any money. We feel so strongly about our position and are so intent on resolving this matter swiftly that we have offered to submit this disagreement to immediate binding arbitration, a process by which an independent third party decides who is right. WorldGate has rejected this offer.

Our priority is to ensure that the Ojo network is always up. In efforts to help WorldGate through its financial troubles, we have made numerous offers to finance WorldGate’s continued operations - even without the usual equity stake an investor would typically take. So you know how committed we are to resolving this situation, it is important to note that these offers have actually exceeded the amount WorldGate claims we owe them. WorldGate has thus far refused all of these offers, but we remain in discussions with them.

We have recently extended another financing offer to help WorldGate through its financial troubles that would include restoring the Ojo network. Although we still do not know when the Ojo network will be back up, I am hopeful that a solution is nearly at hand. So please keep your Ojo close by.

In the meantime, the Snap!VRS network and our highly qualified interpreters are available and proudly serving customers 24 hours a day. While the Ojo network is down, you may use an alternative video phone (e.g. VP-100/200 and D-Link) to call Snap!VRS for all of your interpreting needs. Please dial “snapvrs.tv” or “call.snapvrs.com” from your video phone.

Sincerely,
Richard Schatzberg
CEO

EDIT (8:20pm, 2/6/2008):  I recently received the following email from Glenn Lockhart, who’s responsible for Corporate Communications at Viable, Inc and who was kind enough to give me permission to reprint this:

 Josh:

I came across your latest blog on DeafDC.com, in which you admit to wondering who owns the network on which the VPAD will run. I an pleased to say our network is in-house; we own and operate it ourselves, and consider this a feather in our cap.

Glenn Lockhart
Corporate Communications
Viable, Inc.
VRS: ViableVRS.TV

One day a couple months ago, I was getting a sandwich at a Subways at a mini strip-mall in Frederick, Maryland when I came across this sign at the strip-mall. On the sign, it says, “SEND A *FRUCK* TO OUR SOLDIERS OVERSEAS! $6.95″ The “R” in “FRUCK” is colored red, while all the other letters are black.

You tell me, what the fruck does this mean? Just what is being sent over to our troops for $6.95? I couldn’t figure it out, even when Googling this. And I just can’t imagine this means folks are sending a screw-you to the troops like this — it just has to mean something positive, but I don’t know what.

If it helps, here’s a list of stores at the same strip-mall.

• Subway restaurant (where I ate — I can assure you there’s no frucks there)
• A gun store (I wonder … Likely candidate for frucks here …)
• A “biological” store (whatever that is)
• A Baptist church (although I just can’t imagine them collecting money to send “frucks” to our troops)
• A store called Sahaira (hmmm … ah, it’s a beauty store, but I can’t recall a Fruck shampoo brand)
• An Internet tech store (but again, there’s no Fruck-esque stuff here, is there?)

I kinda think it’s gun-store-related, but I just couldn’t figure out what the fruck it could be.

On a related note, remember my recent blog post asking about a mysterious stick figure doing something questionable on a sign directing pedestrians around some construction? Well, mystery solved. He (she?) was praying. It’s part of an apparently international street art campaign called “Praying Guy.” There’s a lot of related pictures in a Flickr pool by d5bloke.

But I still can’t figure out what the fruck a fruck is supposed to be.

A month ago, GoAmerica announced that it acquired Verizon’s Telecommunication Relay Services (including its video, IP, and TTY relay services). Yesterday, GoAmerica announced that it’s merging with Hands On Video Relay Services (HOVRS). As the parent company for i711 VRS, GoAmerica has already been providing video and IP relay services — and so this merger and acquisition expands GoAmerica into what could possibly be the largest IP relay provider and second-largest VRS provider in the nation.

(Trivia time: more people still use IP relay services through the computer or smartphones than either TTY or video relay services. But the number of users using video relay services is growing dramatically, and should soon eclipse the number of people using IP relay services. A lot less people use TTY relay services than people using either IP or video relay services, and the number continues to dwindle. See chart by National Exchange Carrier Association.)

According to GoAmerica’s press release, HOVRS had been providing VRS services under Sprint and AT&T brands, as well as for several community-based sign language interpreting services. With Verizon’s acquisition a month ago, GoAmerica seems to have consolidated services on behalf of some of the top telecommunication providers.

This puts GoAmerica in a better position to challenge Sorenson VRS’s control of the Video Relay Service landscape. Sorenson has introduced many features (the ability to directly dial 9-1-1 being the most important to me!) over the past couple of years, and yet greater competition may spur Sorenson to innovate to a greater degree. In addition, the mergers and acquisitions may pool resources and knowledge, and bring even more innovation and features to VRS customers. (Dare I suggest, video relay via a pager?) All these would be a great boon to all VRS customers, despite having less variety to choose from.

We may be seeing the beginning of a great consolidation of VRS providers as they merge or are acquired. I count, let’s see, at least twelve VRS websites (caution: major alphabet soup attack coming up): AT&T VRS, CACVRS, CSDVRS, Hamilton VRS, HOVRS, Hawk Relay, i711, IP-Relay VRS, LifeLinks VRS, Sorenson VRS, Snap VRS, Viable VRS, and Sprint VRS. This doesn’t include the Federal VRS, at least three state asscoation video relay services and several additional interpreting-specific agencies. Please (gently) let us know in the comments if I’ve missed any.

However, if you figure out the tangled web of who owns what or who provides VRS on behalf of whom, then there may actually only be seven VRS providers independent of each other: CACVRS (which is also the video relay service platform provider for Hawk Relay and Viable VRS), CSDVRS (which also operates several state association video relay services), Hamilton VRS, i711 VRS (which will operate HOVRS and Verizon’s IP-Relay VRS, and be the video relay service platform provider for AT&T VRS and Sprint VRS plus its contracts including Federal VRS), LifeLinks VRS, Sorenson VRS, and Snap VRS. Big caveat: I don’t claim to be an expert on this, so again please let me know in the comments if I’ve made any mistakes here!

It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the various VRS providers over the next several months to a year or two. Will we continue to see a wave of mergers and acquisitions? Or will “smaller” VRS providers continue to crop up as more and more video relay products become commercially available? I predict that we will see the VRS market dominated by two or three VRS providers, and that several smaller VRS providers will still stick it out.