An assisted user's (AU's) captioning device for assisting an AU during a call with a hearing user (HU) wherein the hearing user uses a HU's communication device, the captioning device comprising a display screen and a processor linked to the display screen, the processor programmed to perform the steps of upon receiving a call, automatically determining if the call is from one of a first set of HUs, upon determining that the call is from one of the first set of HUs, automatically initiating captioning and presenting captions of an HU voice signal during at least a portion of the call, and upon determining that the call is not from one of the first set of HUs, starting the call without captioning and providing an option to the AU to initiate captioning during the call.

A communication system and method usable to facilitate communication between a hearing user and an assisted user. In particular, the system employs a wireless portable tablet or other portable electronic computing device linked to a captioning enabled phone as a remote interface for that phone, thereby providing an assisted user with more options, more freedom, and improved usability of the system.

A communication system comprising a hard of hearing user's wireless phone device configured to (i) wirelessly receive a hearing user's voice signal that originated at a hearing user's phone device, (ii) route the hearing user's voice signal to a relay for transcription into a text communication, (iii) receive a hard of hearing user's voice signal and (iv) transmit the hard of hearing user's voice signal to the hearing user's phone device, a hard of hearing user's captioned device that is independent of the hard of hearing user's phone device, the captioned device including a display screen and a processor, the processor in the captioned device configured to: (i) receive a text communication originating at the relay, the text communication corresponding to a transcription of the hearing user's voice signal, and (ii) display a text caption corresponding to the text communication on the display of the hard of hearing user's captioned device.

A method for maintaining contact information in a hearing impaired assisted user's communication device includes the steps of (a) providing a web site for altering assisted user contact information, (b) linking a proxy device to the web site, (c) receiving an identifier associated with the assisted user's device via the proxy device, (d) identifying an assisted user's device via the received identifier, (e) enabling the proxy device to be used to modify contact information for the assisted user associated with the received identifier, (f) starting a timer to time out a sync timeout period, (g) during the sync timeout period, receiving an indication via the assisted user's device confirming a desire to update the assisted user's contact information, (h) updating the assisted user's contact information, and (i) at the end of the timeout period, ceasing an indication that updated data is ready to be used from the assisted user's device.

A method may include obtaining a first audio signal including first speech originating at a remote device during a communication session between the remote device and a communication device and obtaining a second audio signal including second speech originating at the communication device during the communication session between the remote device and the communication device. The method may also include obtaining a characteristic of the communication session from one or more of: the first audio signal, the second audio signal, and settings of the communication device and determining a hearing level of a user of the communication device using the characteristic of the communication session.

A method to transcribe communications includes the steps of obtaining a plurality of hypothesis transcriptions of a voice signal generated by a speech recognition system, determining consistent words that are included in at least first and second of the plurality of hypothesis transcriptions, in response to determining the consistent words, providing the consistent words to a device for presentation of the consistent words to an assisted user, and presenting the consistent words via a display screen on the device, wherein a rate of the presentation of the words on the display screen is variable.

A method and system for providing captioned telephone service, the method comprising the steps of, initiating a first captioned telephone service call, during the first captioned telephone service call, creating a first set of captions using a call assistant, simultaneous with creating the first set of captions using a call assistant, creating a second set of captions using an automated speech recognition engine, comparing the first set of captions and the second set of captions using a scoring algorithm based on errors between the first and second sets of captions to generate a score for the second set of captions, in response to the score being within a predetermined threshold range, continuing the call using only the automated speech recognition engine to generate text and in response to the score being outside of the predetermined threshold range, continuing the call using a call assistant to generate captions.

A method to transcribe communications includes the steps of obtaining a plurality of hypothesis transcriptions of a voice signal generated by a speech recognition system, determining consistent words that are included in at least first and second of the plurality of hypothesis transcriptions, in response to determining the consistent words, providing the consistent words to a device for presentation of the consistent words to an assisted user, and presenting the consistent words via a display screen on the device, wherein a rate of the presentation of the words on the display screen is variable.

A communication system and method for displaying text captions corresponding to voice communications between an assisted user's mobile wireless device and a separate hearing user's device includes at least one communication component configured to enable the appliance to communicate with a relay, a display, and a processor operably coupled to the at least one communication component and the display. The processor is configured to enable the assisted user to establish an association between the appliance and the mobile device, receive text originating at the relay, the text corresponding to a transcript of the hearing user's voice signal originating at the hearing user's device, and cause text captions corresponding to the received text to be displayed on the display.

A system is provided that includes a first network interface for a first network type and a second network interface for a second network type that is different from the first network type. The system also includes at least one processor configured to cause the system to perform operations. The operations may include obtaining, from the first network interface, audio from a communication session with a remote device established over the first network and obtaining an indication of a communication device available to participate in the communication session and direct audio obtained from the communication session to a remote transcription system. The operations may also include directing the audio to the second network interface for transmission to the communication device, obtaining transcript data from the remote transcription system based on the audio, and directing the transcript data to the second network interface for transmission to the communication device.