A wide variety of communications services designed to help hearing-impaired Alabamians is available through Sprint, the company recently named the state's official Telecommunications Relay Services (TRS) provider.

Sprint Relay Services allow Alabamians who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, deaf-blind or speech-disabled to communicate with hearing persons on the phone through traditional, online or video relay services as well as through captioned telephone technology. All services provided meet Federal Communications Commission mandates for TRS.

Relay Services are available in Alabama by dialing 711 or one of several toll-free numbers. Video relay services are also provided through www.SprintVRS.com, with Internet relay services available at www.SprintRelayOnline.com.

Traditional relay services involve a relay operator serving as an intermediary for phone calls between a hearing-impaired user and a hearing party. The TRS operator speaks words typed by a user on a text telephone (TTY) or via the Internet and types the hearing person's spoken response back to the hearing-impaired user. Video relay services use a similar process, but the hearing-impaired user can communicate in American Sign Language using a computer with a Web camera.

Captioned telephone (Captel) relay service is a leading-edge technology that allows people to receive both voice and text captioning nearly simultaneously. Captel service requires a technologically-equipped Captel phone that displays live captions for every call. Users can read the captions while listening to the other party's voice, allowing conversation to flow naturally.

All Alabama relay services are available 24 hours, seven days a week, with no restrictions on how many calls are made or their length. More information on the services and how to use them is available at AlabamaRelay.com.