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COMMUNICATION ACCESS
Generally speaking, one-on-one communication between persons who are deaf and hearing, is facilitated by a sign language interpreter who translates English into American Sign Language (ASL) for the person that is deaf and ASL into English for the person that is hearing. For a listing of ASL interpreting service vendors in California, refer to the section entitled “Sign Language Services” in this directory. A person that is hard of hearing, not familiar with ASL, may need to use a captioning service which translates spoken words into printed English in a realtime format. This is known as Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) and a listing of vendors can be found in the “Captioning Services” portion of this directory. There are also dual typewriter devices which allow a person that is hearing and a person with a hearing loss the ability to communicate by typing back and forth. Two of the vendors for these typing devices (sComm and Interpretype) are listed in the “Assistive Technology” section of this directory. When none of these services are available, writing back and forth with the individual is an option. Lipreading is probably the least effective manner of communication because many of the sounds in English are hidden and may also resemble other sounds. This increases the possibility of miscommunication.