Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc., Formation of

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defines functional equivalency as the optimal usability of telephone equipment and services in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The experience of a person with a disability has to be as equivalent as [Page 960]possible to the experience of someone without a disability using a phone or any telecommunications services. When a hearing person makes a call, all he or she has to do is pick up the nearest phone, listen for a dial tone, and press a button or dial a keypad to call a number. Although the technology has evolved, the process of making or receiving a call remains the same. Approximately 48 million people with hearing disabilities in the United States consider some combination of voice, video, and ...