While attending a holiday reception at
the White House two months ago, Jarrod Musano was being introduced to
President Barack Obama when the president realized Musano is deaf.
"President Obama took one look at my interpreter, made eye contact
with me, shook my hand and said, 'I want you to know we're looking into
the interpreter situation that happened in South Africa,' " recalled
Musano, a New York entrepreneur.
"It was so quick of him that I
was stunned and forgot what I had planned to say, so I replied, 'The
deaf community is also working on it,' " he said. "The president said,
'That's important because we need to work with the community on this.' "
That "situation" was the public relations
debacle that ensued earlier in December, when the purported sign
language interpreter assigned to translate Obama's remarks at the
funeral for former South African President Nelson Mandela was exposed as
a fraud.
His "signs" had been little more than gibberish to
the hearing impaired watching in person and on TV. The incident
embarrassed Obama and outraged the deaf community, which has long
struggled to overcome isolation.
While the incident was a setback in that struggle, Musano and his company,
Convo,
have been working for several year to improve the ability of the deaf
to communicate with the hearing—and in ways that can broaden their
career options.
Convo's technology, known as a
video relay service, or VRS,
lets a deaf or hearing-impaired person call a hearing one via a
smartphone or Internet-enabled computer and talk to the other person
through an American Sign Language interpreter.
There are
several other VRS providers for the deaf, including Sorensen, Purple,
Communication Axess Ability Group and Global VRS. Their services, like
those of privately held Convo, are government-subsidized, so calls are
free to users.
Andrew Phillips, a lawyer in the Law and Advocacy Center of the
National Association of the Deaf,
said, "NAD believes that VRS has been a great equalizer for deaf and
hard-of-hearing people as it has given them independence to easily
contact their children's schools, work colleagues and places of
business.
"VRS allows a more natural and real-time conversation
through telecommunications for ASL-fluent individuals," he said. "Convo
... and the other VRS providers enable our community to have access to
telecommunication services on nearly equal footing."
Convo's marketing strategy is to differentiate itself by focusing on the
fact that it is owned by deaf people and that provides an app designed
by deaf people.
Founded in 2009, the company also touts that it trains its interpreters to convey the mood and tone of a call's participants.
The goal is for the translator to effectively "disappear" from the conversation, Musano said.
"We train the interpreter to 'be' the person."
During an interview with CNBC.com, Musano
demonstrated the Convo app on his smartphone. A split screen popped up,
with the interpreter on the top and the caller, Musano, on the bottom.
The app dialed a relative of his—a private investigator named Bill
Stanton—who was told verbally by the interpreter that she was going to
translate a call from a deaf person.
"Billy, can you hear me
now?" Musano signed with his hands to the interpreter, who then spoke
those words to Stanton. When he replied that he could "hear" Musano, the
interpreter then signed that response back to Musano, her face
reflecting Stanton's laugh.
Their conversation went smoothly
and much more quickly than it would have with text telephone, or TTY, an
older phone-based technology. That system required the deaf person to
laboriously enter words on a teletype machine, which were then relayed
to the hearing person by a human facilitator, who would then have to
type the responses.
He recalled working for his father's real estate management firm and
how challenging it was to deal with contractors and others on the phone.
"People have no patience for me to type something down," Musano said.
"Most people, when they hear that they're getting a teletype call, they
hang up. Especially in New York—they ain't got time for nothing."
But after VRS began being rolled out on a widespread basis in the early 2000s, "I installed it in my office," he said. "What it did for me: I was able to move my business faster, getting things done quicker."
Because
of the newfound ease of communication, Musano was able to start and
expand several businesses, including a maintenance company and a
construction company, as well as running his dad's real estate
operation. Without the technology, he said, he likely would not have had
those opportunities.
He invested in Convo in 2010 and became CEO last March. It operates
five call centers around the country, offering customers
round-the-clock service.
The company's biggest challenge is
ensuring the quality of interpreters because of the premium Convo places
on having callers fully understand the tenor of the caller.
"It takes a lot of training," Musano said.
But it's worth it, he added.
Musano
mentioned a customer who used Convo to call his father. After the call,
the father texted the son to say that for the first time he sensed his
son's "voice," Musano said.
Brian Hertneky, a leader of the
Deaf Gamers Network, an online community, echoed that reaction.
"When
I talk with hearing people ... they tell me that they like the relay
interpreters for Convo because they forget that they are speaking
through an interpreter to talk with me," he said.
Glenn
Lockhart, who is deaf and lives in Washington, D.C., said he used Convo
several weeks ago when "a pipe burst and my kitchen flooded."
"I got a plumber and called a nearby store to see if they had water
vacuum cleaners, and did both using Convo on my phone," he said. "All
that occurred while I was looking for the shutoff valve, moving my stuff
on tables and chairs, throwing towels and sheets to divert water, and
panicked stuff like that. As floods go, I waded through this just fine,
and the calls I made were seamless. I didn't give them any thought
throughout."
