US Patent 7315612 Systems and methods for facilitating communications involving hearing-impaired parties

A method for providing communication services for communications between a hearing-impaired party and a hearing party includes establishing a voice link with the hearing party. The method also includes receiving a voice message from the hearing party via the voice link and generating a text message corresponding to the voice message using voice recognition. The method may also include transmitting the text message to the hearing-impaired party. Optionally, a high speed text input device may also be used with, or instead of, the voice recognition to generate the text message.