What is the National Relay Service (NRS)?
The National Relay Service (NRS) is a 24 hour, 7 days Australia-wide telephone service, it is available to anyone at the cost of a standard phone call. If you are Deaf or hard of hearing or speech impaired and you use a TTY or computer with internet connection, you can contact anyone via telephone through the NRS. When you call the NRS, a Relay Officer (RO) will assist with your call. A Deaf person with a TTY, will type and read the converstation via a keyboard and screen. The RO will become “your voice” and read out loud your converstation to the other person, the RO will listen to response from the hearing person and type it back for you to read. Specially trained Relay Officers (RO) professionally relay conversations between two parties. Conversations can be relayed in a variety of ways: from text to voice, voice to text, or even use your own voice to converse and read back the return conversation on the screen (this is called VCO or Voice Carry Over). Of course strict confidentiali