There is video communication equipment all over my building. In addition to the deaf employees who have videophones at their desks, there’s also multiple small rooms that are set up for video conferencing - some are casual and some are more formal. I do at least one video conference a week, in one of the small informal rooms; sometimes there will also be an additional meeting in one of the small formal rooms. Only once have I interpreted in the giant VTC room in the basement - there are multiple screens, multiple cameras, a big “audience” section, and a little camera that’s targeted on a copystand so you can easily show documents to people who are at a remote site. There are two women who work in the big VTC room, and I’m pretty sure their sole job is the scheduling, operation, and maintenance of that room.

I think video conference technology is neat, but as an interpreter, though, I don’t really like doing them. It’s often very difficult to identify who is speaking, because all the voices are coming through the same speaker and the picture is sometimes too fuzzy to even see whose mouth is moving - not to mention the fact that I don’t usually know the names of people at remote sites, so even if I can figure out who is speaking, it’s hard to identify them!

But back to the video equipment the deaf people in my building have - they’re videophones, designed to connect directly to a video relay service. (They have several to choose from, including FedVRS for sensitive communications.) And to be honest, having the videophones in the building has made life easier for the onsite terps, too! It is such a pain to try to balance the phone on your shoulder while you’re signing for a phone call, but now the deaf employees can call through relay. I think some are still in the habit of calling through the other onsite terps, but I’m not in that position anymore - my current clients are perfectly happy to use VRS now.