Southwest Washington Center of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing




Who is the Father of VRS?

Published in SWCDHH What's Up?! newsletter
May-June 2005 issue
By Frank Mounts

Who is the Real Father of VRS? The question popped in my head for quite a while. I decided to set out and do a bit of poking around and researching. I asked all major VRS providers: Sprint, CSD, Sorenson and HOVRS.

They were quick to point to Ed Bosson, the Texas relay administrator. Ed envisioned deaf people communicating with each other with videophones more than 10 years ago. At the time, Ed saw how Internet evolved into people’s lives. He knew it would eventually make its way into the lives of the deaf people. He also knew the possibilities that video conferencing technology was ripe enough to enable communication over high speed land line with use of ASL.

Ed then contacted Mark Seeger who was then the account manager of Sprint TRS in Texas at the time and explained about the possibilities. Mark contacted the Sprint technicians to see if Ed’s vision would work. The technicians reported that it would work. Ed was thrilled to know that and went to Texas PUC with the idea. However, it took Ed a long time to be able to convince PUC and got some help from a lawyer in interpreting. One by one, Ed’s supervisor then the Commissioners were convinced it was a feature of TRS. They allowed Ed to do the trials. Sprint was the first TRS to provide two trial testing.

The first trial was in Austin, Texas during 1995 and was limited to 4 locations. The second trial was done in 1997 expanding to 10 different cities in Texas. During that time, two different services participated in the trials, Sprint and Hanwave Interpreting. During that time it was called VRI (Video Relay Interpreting) but not the same as Video Remote Interpreting. It was suggested by Linda Nelson, a deaf representative that the acronym word be changed to VRS (Video Relay Service) and Ed went with that. Ed thought and agreed it would be better described that way than “Video Relay Interpreting”.

Jon Hodson from Sorenson worked with Ed Bosson during early stages and provided Sorenson PCI, video conferencing software during the VRS trial in Texas.

To some extent, the trials went well that time so sometime during 2000, VRS became formal in Texas. Since that time, Texas was paying for the VRS service until FCC started reimbursing VRS providers, Texas stopped paying for it. Hanwave Interpreting Service was bought out by CSD (Communication Service for the Deaf) so Sprint subcontracted with them jumping aboard the beginning of the VRS industry.

Getting the facts straight:

  • Sorenson is the inventor of the high compression chip and co-developed the D-Link videophone.
  • Washington state and Texas were the first states to try out VRS statewide in 1998 on trial basis.
  • Sweden was the first country to implement a public VRS fully subsidized by the government.
  • USA was the second country to provide public and personal VRS.
  • Sprint/CSD were the first to provide VRS trials and introduced the first VRS model at Deaf Way II in 2002.

On basis of Ed Bosson’s work in VRS, national awards were given to him by Smithsonian Computerworld and TDI. Ed Bosson has been in communication with CSD/Sprint, Sorenson, and Sweden on making this happen. Hence, VRS was born in Texas. The VRS trials in Texas was then used as a model by FCC making this a national reality. Based on my research and information given, I believe Ed Bosson is the Father of VRS.

Hats off to Ed for making this happen!

 

United Way
Serving Clark, Cowlitz, Lewis, Pacific, Skamania, and Wahkiakum counties