Not Being Able to Hear Doesn't Mean You Can't Make Phone Calls: Taiwan's Sign Language Video Relay Service and the Institutional Test for Information Equity

30-Second Overview: For most people, making a phone call is an ordinary daily action; for some deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, however, the telephone may be the very thing that separates them from hospitals, banks, ride-hailing services, police reporting, government windows, and workplaces. Taiwan launched a nationwide Sign Language Video Relay Service (Video Relay Service, VRS) on August 1, 2024. The Ministry of Digital Affairs is responsible for technical development, while the Ministry of Health and Welfare oversees service operations. This allows users to connect with interpreters via sign language or text, who then communicate via voice with hearing parties. ¹ This is a significant innovation in public service; subsequent policy data from the Ministry of Health and Welfare also indicate that the VRS is a cross-ministerial arrangement approved by the Executive Yuan, with the Ministry of Digital Affairs developing the system and the Ministry of Health and Welfare operating the service center. ² Yet what it truly aims to solve is not merely "whether a platform exists," but whether deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals can be understood and responded to at every moment they need to make decisions, access services, or handle crises, without having to repeatedly prove they deserve assistance. ³

Why a Phone Call Becomes a Public Issue

Telephone design presupposes that users can hear ring tones, understand speech, respond immediately, and complete identity verification when the other party cannot see them. These assumptions do not hold for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. Even if a person can speak orally, it does not mean they can clearly understand the rapid explanations of customer service personnel, medical staff, or government caseworkers. Even if they can read and write, it does not mean every agency provides real-time text, email, or online application alternatives.

Therefore, information equity cannot be understood solely as "whether websites have subtitles." It includes at least four capabilities: First, accessing information, including announcements, news, medical health education, and emergency alerts; Second, expressing needs, including reporting crimes, making appointments, canceling services, filing complaints, or inquiring about bills; Third, completing interactions, including identity verification, follow-up questions, confirmation, and leaving records; Fourth, taking action under time pressure, such as during disasters, accidents, medical visits, and judicial proceedings. Providing only static text may improve the first layer but may not necessarily complete the latter three.

The information equity textbook for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, archived by the National Central Library, reminds us that deaf individuals need not just isolated subtitles or sign language, but clear, clean, and non-obscuring visual information. In major events and emergency messages, sign language interpretation, subtitles, and screen layout all affect comprehension. ⁴ This perspective moves the issue from "whether there is translation" to "whether the message can be reliably understood at the correct time."

Figure 1: Illustration of a sign language service scenario. Photo taken by Petteri Sulonen, sourced from the Wikimedia Commons file page, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license; this article has not modified the image. The photo depicts a general sign language translation scenario and does not represent the Taiwan VRS platform or specific service personnel.

Figure 2: Closed Captioning logo, symbolizing that audio-visual content can be accessed with subtitles. The illustration was released by WGBH into the public domain; see the Wikimedia Commons file page for details.

Figure 3: Subtitle accessibility icon used by the U.S. National Park Service, sourced from the Wikimedia Commons file page, originally belonging to U.S. government public domain materials. The icon serves only as an informational design illustration and does not represent a Taiwan government emblem.

From Welfare Services to Rights-Based Language

Taiwan's sign language translation and simultaneous interpretation (CART) did not appear in 2024. Local governments have long provided communication assistance for government affairs, medical care, education, judicial and police matters, social participation, and emergency cases through social welfare programs. Taking the Taipei City Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Communication Service Program as an example, sign language translation services are marked as 24-hour, while interpretation services are原则上 (in principle) from 08:00 to 22:00. Applicants can apply via phone, SMS, fax, email, messaging apps, or online systems, generally applying three days before the service begins, with exceptions for emergency situations. ⁵

The value of such programs lies in their acknowledgment that communication is not a private individual issue, but a reasonable accommodation that public agencies must address when providing services. However, local programs also have clear limitations: service windows, application rules, available hours, interpreter manpower, and budgets may vary by county or city. When deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals seek medical care, education, work, or travel across counties and cities, the familiar processes they once relied on may not be directly continued.

The Law for the Advancement of Persons with Disabilities and the CRPD provide a higher-level rights framework. The Ministry of Health and Welfare's regulatory page lists the Law for the Advancement of Persons with Disabilities as a crucial law ensuring the equal participation of persons with disabilities, providing both Chinese and English regulatory documents. ⁶ The CART Center of the Social and Family Affairs Agency directly cites Article 9 of the CRPD, placing information and communication technology, public services, and equal access within the obligation of accessibility. It also notes that our laws require competent authorities to provide public information accessibility services. ⁷

This shift is important. If sign language translation is viewed only as a social welfare subsidy, services may be placed in a position of "provided only when there is a budget." If it is understood as an information and communication right, the government must ask: Which key services cannot rely solely on user application? Which fields must proactively prepare? Who is responsible for ensuring translation quality? When errors occur, who must explain and provide remedies?

What VRS Does and Does Not Do

The Ministry of Digital Affairs and the Ministry of Health and Welfare launched VRS in 2024, announcing the platform went live on August 1 of the same year. Official statements describe this as a cross-ministerial and public-private collaborative service: the Ministry of Digital Affairs is responsible for software technical development, and the Ministry of Health and Welfare is responsible for platform operations, aiming to serve deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals nationwide. ¹ The basic VRS process involves users logging in via mobile phone, tablet, or computer, and choosing sign language video or text to communicate with an interpreter. The interpreter then communicates with hearing parties via telephone or related tools, passing content between the two parties. ⁷

VRS's institutional breakthrough lies in partially transforming the problem of "the other party does not provide a text channel" into an intermediary service that can be supported in real-time. Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals no longer need to first find a friend or relative to make a call on their behalf, nor do they need to hand over personal medical, financial, or family matters to family members for explanation. This has direct significance for independent living and privacy.

However, VRS does not eliminate all barriers. First, it requires equipment, internet, cameras, login capability, and a certain level of digital familiarity. For the elderly, low-income households, rural users, or those unaccustomed to video, the service may still have a digital threshold. Second, VRS service hours may not necessarily overlap with the operating hours of every agency. The Social and Family Affairs Agency's public page currently lists translation services as Monday to Saturday, 09:00 to 19:00, excluding national holidays. Between this and the 24-hour needs of medical emergencies, disasters, night-time transportation, or financial reporting of lost cards, a clearer connection mechanism is still needed. ⁷

Third, interpreters can only translate; they cannot make decisions for agencies, nor can they guarantee that the other party will respond in a friendly, clear, and reasonable manner. If bank customer service is unfamiliar with deaf and hard-of-hearing clients, hospitals lack visual queue systems, or police procedures do not arrange simultaneous records, VRS may simply send deaf individuals to another door of a system that remains unfriendly.

Service Quality Is More Than "Being Connected"

Public services often evaluate digital platforms using connection rates, wait times, or number of service cases, but deaf and hard-of-hearing information equity requires more metrics. At least the following four categories can be distinguished:

The information equity textbook archived by the National Central Library concretizes the problems deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals face in television and public messages: subtitles may be incomplete, sign language screens may be too small or obscured by other visual elements, and policies may exist "on paper" without being implemented. ⁴ This observation applies equally to VRS. The launch of a platform does not mean every agency answering the phone is prepared. The existence of translation services does not mean all professional vocabulary and procedures can be correctly converted.

Quality also involves language and culture. Taiwan Sign Language is not a simple code of replacing Mandarin words with gestures. Different users may prefer sign language, oral speech, lip-reading, simultaneous interpretation, or mixed methods. If policies use "deaf and hard-of-hearing" as a single classification, it is easy to ignore differences between Deaf culture, late-deafened individuals, elderly hearing-impaired persons, and those with multiple disabilities. Good services should allow users to choose communication methods, rather than requiring users to adapt to the government's most convenient method.

Emergency Information Is the Moment Most Needing Institutionalization

For routine appointments or bill inquiries, users might still wait, ask friends or relatives for help, or handle it another day. But earthquakes, typhoons, pandemics, fires, and public safety events cannot be remedied by individual patience. CRPD-related textbooks explicitly list information access in disaster scenarios as an important right, noting that sign language, subtitles, and visual messages should appear together in public communication. ⁴

Therefore, emergency information should not just be a small sign language box temporarily placed in the bottom right corner of news screens. The government needs to establish cross-platform specifications: Can warning SMS be fully presented in text? Do local government live streams simultaneously provide subtitles and sign language? Do shelters, medical stations, and traffic interruption information have visualizable processes? If VRS does not provide services at night or on national holidays, how are emergency reporting, medical, and disaster windows taken over?

The minutes of the Executive Yuan's Task Force on the Advancement of Persons with Disabilities for its 2025 meeting show that the government has discussed allowing ministries and agencies to provide sign language translation, simultaneous interpretation, or AI real-time subtitles as needed for self-organized or outsourced activities, and requires including costs in budget planning. The same minutes also indicate that VRS should not centralize all professional services into a single window; ministries and agencies should still gradually incorporate sign language translation according to their respective responsibilities. ⁸ This resolution reveals a key principle: VRS is common infrastructure, but it cannot become an excuse for ministries and agencies to evade their own accessibility responsibilities.

From a Single Platform to Cross-Agency Responsibility

For sign language video relay to truly become public infrastructure, at least four institutional adjustments are needed.

First, write service responsibility into agency processes. Medical, financial, police, labor, education, and transportation units should each establish standard operating procedures for using VRS, sign language translation, and simultaneous interpretation, specifying identity verification, sensitive data, record retention, translation errors, and complaint remedies. It cannot be that deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals must explain "what I need" on-site every time.

Second, establish quality metrics centered on user tasks. The government should not only publish the number of service cases but also know whether users successfully completed a task, how long they waited, which agencies most frequently rejected them, and which vocabulary and processes were most error-prone. Data publication should adopt de-identification and minimum necessity principles, not increasing personal privacy risks for the sake of evaluating services.

Third, keep non-digital alternatives alive. VRS is an important tool, but it should not cause paper forms, SMS, email, on-site translation, and simultaneous interpretation to be weakened because "an App already exists." True digital inclusion is not pushing everyone into the same platform, but providing multiple entry points that can be connected to each other.

Fourth, involve deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals in co-design and supervision. The Social and Family Affairs Agency's release of the CRPD Third National Report indicates that actions from 2020 to 2024 were tracked by the Executive Yuan's Task Force on the Advancement of Persons with Disabilities, emphasizing the promotion of an inclusive society through accessible formats and public-private collaboration. The report also mentions aspects such as service coverage, family support, and easy-to-read information. ⁹ This tracking cannot just involve agencies reporting completion rates; it must also allow actual users to participate in testing, review subtitles, examine service hours, and judge the standards for "completing tasks."

This Is Not Just Swapping Voice for Sign Language

The core of public information accessibility is not mechanically translating a speech segment into sign language, but ensuring that everyone can obtain information, express will, make decisions, and assume life responsibilities under equal conditions. VRS gives Taiwan its first nationwide, cross-ministerial communication equity platform, but the platform itself is only the starting point.

Media reports on important issues for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing communities in 2024 also viewed the formal launch of VRS as one of the annual institutional changes. This reflects that it indeed responded to long-existing daily communication needs. ¹⁰ However, the true measure should not be whether the launch press conference went smoothly, but whether a person, when needing to cancel a medical appointment at night, confirm evacuation information during a disaster, handle bills at a bank, or state an incident at a police station, can be fully understood without relying on a family spokesperson.

Taiwan has moved from the stage of "whether accessible services exist" to "whether services are truly usable." The next step is not to add another beautiful feature, but to ensure every public agency bears its own information equity responsibility, connecting VRS, sign language translation, simultaneous interpretation, subtitles, easy-to-read information, and on-site services. When deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals can handle their own lives directly like everyone else, information equity will cease to be just a promise in policy documents and become the actual experience of daily institutions.

Service Boundaries and Data Governance

VRS involves not just communication, but also personal data and sensitive situations. When users seek help in medical, financial, domestic violence, judicial, or labor dispute contexts, the translated content may contain highly private information. If the platform saves call records, service times, agency names, or user identification data, it must clearly state the purpose of retention, retention period, access authority, and appeal channels. If services save identifiable communication content for long periods merely for statistical usage, it may turn a service originally designed for autonomy into a new surveillance risk.

This also involves the division of labor between human translation and AI tools. AI real-time subtitles can reduce wait times and supplement some speech-to-text needs, but in contexts involving dialects, professional terms, multiple simultaneous speakers, background noise, emotions, and semantic shifts, errors may directly affect rights. If the government adopts AI, it should position it as an auxiliary tool and not shift error responsibility to users. For high-risk matters such as medical consent, judicial statements, financial authorization, and emergency reporting, human confirmation, restatement, and correction mechanisms should be retained. The Executive Yuan's Task Force on the Advancement of Persons with Disabilities has discussed the application of AI real-time subtitles and sign language translation in meeting materials, but "whether it can be used" and "in what situations AI cannot be relied upon alone" must be regulated separately. ⁸

Another easily overlooked issue is the manpower for service supply. Sign language interpreters, simultaneous interpreters, and caseworkers familiar with deaf and hard-of-hearing communication all require training, reasonable workloads, and professional support. If policies only pursue extending service hours without simultaneously increasing manpower and professional division of labor, the result may be longer wait times, interpreter fatigue, decreased quality, and finally, users bearing the cost of institutional expansion. The application time limits, emergency cases, and cross-county coordination problems presented by local service programs exactly illustrate the distance between "service exists" and "service is available at all times." ⁵

Taiwan can establish a set of cross-ministerial minimum service standards in the future: General public information must have readable text and subtitles. High-risk services must provide human sign language or simultaneous interpretation options. Emergency events must have night-time and holiday alternative channels. Each agency must publish responsible windows and appeal processes. The platform should regularly publish de-identified wait times, task completion rates, cancellation rates, and user feedback. These standards should not be formulated only by administrative agencies, but tested jointly by deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, interpreters, CARTists, medical and judicial professionals.

If VRS is viewed as a standalone digital product, policy may ultimately be left with only download numbers, call volumes, and promotional videos. If it is viewed as public infrastructure for information equity, the evaluation focus will shift to whether it can reduce reliance on spokespersons, whether it can complete important life tasks, whether it can provide reliable information in crises, and whether someone is held accountable when errors occur. This is the gap Taiwan needs to continuously track as it moves from welfare services to rights-based governance.

Further Reading

Readers can further refer to the Sign Language Translation and Simultaneous Interpretation Service Zone to understand the Social and Family Affairs Agency's integrated entry point for sign language translation, simultaneous interpretation, and VRS services. You can also refer to the Accessibility Web Service Network to understand the accessibility testing and certification system for government websites and digital services. The two correspond to different policy levels of "someone assisting communication" and "information itself being accessible."

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