TTRS — Thailand's Total-Conversation Video Relay Service for Deaf Citizens, and the Cost of a Three-Month Funding Gap

The Thailand Telecommunication Relay Service (TTRS) was set up in 2011 by the Universal Foundation for Persons with Disabilities and NSTDA's Assistive and Medical Devices Research Center (A-MED), with initial funding from the Office of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (ONBTC). It uses a 'Total Conversation' platform combining simultaneous video, voice and text, so a deaf caller can sign to an interpreter who relays the call to a hearing person.
Reported scale: nWise, the technology provider, cites growth from around 45,000 calls in 2012 to over 115,000 in 2015 and more than 370,000 uses by end-2015. The Story Thailand reports roughly 40,000 subscribers but only a little over 10,000 regular users, about 40 TTRS interpreters (of roughly 500 in Thailand) each handling 60–70 requests a day, against about 400,000 Thais registered with a hearing impairment. Prachatai reported 1,200–1,600 calls a day and about 450,000 services a year.
Cautionary evidence: because the service depends on year-by-year regulator budget approval, it ceased operating on 13 June 2025 while the NBTC consolidated project funding. Prachatai reported the outage still unresolved after three months (17 September 2025), with deaf community leaders describing being unable to contact family and deaf delivery riders being cancelled by customers. No independent outcome evaluation was found; figures are operator- or press-reported. The practice shows both the value of relay services and the fragility of accessibility infrastructure without a stable funding line.

Read the full analysis: https://nwise.se/resources/250-percent-increase-thai-telecommunication-relay-service-use/