All calls relayed through Typetalk are private and confidential.

Many government departments, the emergency services, banks and building societies use our services, where personal, sensitive and confidential information is relayed on a daily basis.

Our Relay Assistants are highly trained and work within a secure area with restricted access for authorised personnel only. All Relay Assistants sign a confidentiality statement, in which they agree not to divulge any information, and they are prohibited from keeping or using any pens or paper whilst working on the relay service.

Relay Assistants handle up to 100 calls per day, and whilst they are unlikely to remember the details of individual calls, they are strictly prohibited from discussing the content of relayed calls with anyone else.

Assistance for organisations

As explained in the Disability Discrimination Act, it is important for organisations to make reasonable adjustments to enable disabled employees, including those who are deaf, hard of hearing or speech impaired, to carry out their day-to-day duties in the workplace.

If you would like any help with setting up your organisation's telephone systems to make or receive Typetalk calls for employees, and also customers, our Customer Support team would be happy to help.

You may, for example, need to ensure calls can be transferred between your departments to employees who use textphones. Organisations also often need to make adjustments to ensure that 18001 and 18002 prefixed calls which provide access to Typetalk, are enabled through their switchboard, or through any online enquiry forms on their website.

We have a team of Outreach Co-ordinators who visit organisations to explain the service in more detail and they can also provide training for employees across your organisation. Please contact our Customer Support team on 0800 7311 888 for further information.

Data protection

Call centres and banks can no longer cite the Data Protection Act (DPA) as a reason for refusing calls from deaf people through RNID typetalk, via an interpreter or any other relay service (source TAG: sequel 2006).

After complaints from many deaf people about refused calls, TAG contacted the Information Commissioner’s Office, which rules on issues about the Data Protection Act.

Excerpt from the letter to TAG from the Information Commissioner’s Office

“If any individual contacts an organisation using Typetalk or a sign language interpreter we would expect the same level of security to be in place as with any customer. This would include ensuring that adequate security questions were asked to authenticate that the customer is who they say they are before discussing any account details."

“Once the individual had been authenticated, the organisation would be able to answer the enquiry for the customer through the Typetalk operator. The customer who has contacted Typetalk will be aware that information will be disclosed to the operator in order for this to be relayed to them. We would consider that the customer had effectively consented to their information being used in this way.”