There is a wide range of equipment and services for elderly or disabled people available from phone service providers. You should contact phone service providers to check what each offers, and choose which to subscribe to, depending on what is available.
The telephone service provider may offer:-
- specialised equipment. This may be free of charge, or social services may pay if you have been assessed as having particular needs.
- priority fault repair services for disabled customers. All telephone service providers are required to provide this service
- for people who are blind - bills in braille or large print or a talking telephone bill, followed up by a written bill. Contracts with the customer and information about the services provided should also be available in these formats. All telephone service providers are required to provide these services as part of their licence conditions
- for people who cannot hold, handle or read a printed telephone book, - free directory enquiries if the person registers this need in advance, and connection to that number if required. All telephone service providers are required to provide this service, and most of them do so through BT
- for people who use textphones, - quick dial access to emergency services, operator assistance and directory enquiries; connections to RNID Typetalk operators; and call progress information, for example, engaged tone or ringing tone, in a standard text format. All telephone service providers are required to provide these services and most of them do so through BT's TextDirect. BT gives an automatic rebate for the text part of a call made through a textphone (TextDirect) and through a RNID Typetalk operator. Other telephone service providers may offer text rebate schemes. Information on these schemes is available from individual telephone service providers.
- for older or disabled people, - a scheme whereby they can nominate someone else to handle billing enquiries on her/his behalf. All telephone operators are required to provide this service as part of their licence conditions.
-BT also offers a text rebate scheme for those who have a speech impairment and use a communication aid such as a light-writer. It is not an automatic rebate and if this applies to you, you must claim your money back. More information on BT's text rebate scheme for users of communication aids is available from:-
BT (Text Rebate Scheme)
Customer Support Department
John Wood House
Glacier Building
Harrington Dock
Brunswick Business Park
Liverpool
L3 4DF
Tel: 0800 731 1888 (Mon-Fri 8.00am-8.00pm; Sat and Sun 9.00am-5.00pm)
Textphone: 18001 0800 500888
Fax: 0151 709 8119
For further information call in or telephone your local CAB.
Please note that this answer is correct as of November 2011