Expanding Accessibility

A hearing-impaired customer uses FiOS and a video link for face-to-face communications in American Sign Language

David Shelton speaks to us with his hands, and we’re responding face-to-face in the language he knows best.

We’re doing it via videophones with employees who know American Sign Language so that deaf or hearing-impaired customers like Shelton can communicate with us in the way they’re most comfortable. The service began in 2007 and it is making a difference.

“You get to speak face-to-face with customer service, and that really makes a huge difference,” said Shelton, a retired federal employee living in Maryland. “My issues have been taken care of without any problem because that person understands what I’m talking about.”

Shelton’s conversations with Verizon are made possible through our network and the availability of the high-speed Internet access we provide to our customers.

We’re committed to making that technology accessible to everyone, and we’ve been working toward that goal for 15 years through our two Verizon Centers for Customers with Disabilities in Marlboro, Massachusetts and Oxnard, California.

The centers, which handled nearly 800,000 calls last year and created more than $55 million in sales, provide telecommunications services for people with hearing, vision, mobility, speech and cognitive limitations.

The videophone service has proved so popular with customers that the Marlboro center now has plans to install four more in 2008.

Aging and Technology

The need to make technology accessible is growing. People with disabilities are the largest minority in America. Along with disability, age is becoming a factor in the adoption and accessibility of technology.

Verizon took two significant actions in 2007 to help aging adults address some of these challenges.

• In March 2007, the Verizon Foundation delivered a $1.5 million grant to the American Foundation for the Blind. (www.afb.org/seniorsite)
• We launched a lightweight mobile phone dubbed the “Coupe” that features a large display and has buttons with larger numbers. The phone quickly exceeded all sales estimates.

Along with the Coupe, Verizon designed a cell-phone service plan for older Americans called “America’s Choice 65 Plus.” It’s inexpensive — $30 a month with a two-year service plan — and simple, with lots of “anytime” minutes and even more night and weekend minutes.

“We’re always trying to find ways to service our customers in an accessible manner,” Mahoney said. “We serve them with e-mail. We have products with Braille, phones with big buttons, phones that have photos on the buttons to help people who have cognitive difficulties, and we even have phones that operate by remote control for people with physical disabilities.”