General Communication

There are apps to help with day-to-day communications; making appointments, enquiring about bills or payments, hospitals, doctors, dentists, power companies, anyone you need to call.

Relay UK is a service to help deaf people, those who have hearing loss, or are speech impaired, to communicate over the phone. It is free, easy to use, and available 24/7. You just pay your normal call charges.

Relay UK can connects you to a relay assistant to make a phone call. The relay assistant can then:

• type what the caller is saying so you can read their responses, if you can’t hear
• read your written responses to the caller, if you can’t speak

You can use this service through the app. Download it here:

Android: Google Play

Apple: App Store

Then link your number to it and tell the app how you would like to use the service.

The Relay UK service supports:

• Text to voice – a call from a mobile or textphone to another mobile or fixed phone
• Voice to text – a call from a mobile or fixed phone to another mobile or textphone
• Text to text – a call between two mobiles, two textphones, or a combination of these two devices
• Voice to voice – a call from a mobile or fixed telephone to another mobile or fixed phone

Features:

• Adjustable text size and display theme
• As a regulated service, you can use the app to arrange GP and hospital appointments over the phone

Find out more on the BT website.

This is a speech-to-text phone calling service which delivers subtitles for voice calls in real-time.

The service is free between people who both have the app. If you call people who don't have the app, a subscription is necessary. So encourage your friends and family to download it.

One of the most appealing features of this app is that it can be used to call anyone, regardless of whether the person on the receiving end of the call has the app installed on their phone. Once the call is connected, the person on the receiving end of the call is given an audio prompt that the call is being transcribed. After that, everything the recipient says is transcribed in real-time and displayed on the user’s mobile phone. Simply put, everything the person you call says, shows up on your phone as text.

If you'd rather not talk, you can also type what you want to say and the app converts is to speech for the person you have called to hear.

As with all voice recognition technology, the accuracy is generally good but not perfect. Most errors are usually obvious enough to prompt follow-up questions for clarification.

It is easy to get started and very user friendly. Simply download the app from:

Android: Google Play

Apple: App Store

There are basic, but useful, features included, such as an option to enlarge the size of the displayed text, another to mute the microphone, and you can also retrieve individual transcriptions of conversations by selecting the appropriate name under the list of contacts.

You can find more information on the Rogervoice website.

Features:

• Supports over 80 languages 
• You can speak to the other person on the call, or write your message, which will be read aloud to the other person by a vocal synthesiser 
• It can also transcribe voicemails 
• The app doesn’t support calls to emergency services or premium-rate numbers.

You need a high-bandwith connection (Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G or 5G)