Looks like I gave myself too much credit, probably undeserved in the first place, for getting someone at DoITT or CityBridge to fix access to the 711 relay service from LinkNYC kiosks. As of last week, after I published a story describing problems with accessing 711 from LinkNYC machines, calls to 711 from LinkNYC suddenly did what they are supposed to do: Connect to a live person who serves as intermediary between a person with normal hearing and a TTY-equipped individual who is deaf, hard of hearing, or mute. It’s an ADA-mandated service required on all public pay telephones and VOIP devices such as LinkNYC.

That functionality was short-lived. Since a few days ago calls to 711 from LinkNYC did what they had done before. They now go to the TTY modem, connecting to a live human only after several minutes of modem noises. I thought I might have made a difference in some small way but it did not last long, if in fact my write-up of this matter had any impact whatsoever. I don’t really care if it did, I just wish things like 711 worked from public kiosks and pay telephones.

I did a broader survey of CityBridge’s payphones and estimate that calls to 711 from those phones go through only about 20% of the time. Most phones return an error message when one attempts to reach 711. The information card on every CityBridge phone says 711 is a free call.

I also confirmed, on the authority of someone who would know, that calls from CityBridge payphones to the newer toll-free exchanges (866/855/844/833) do not get recognized as toll-free numbers. One must deposit 50¢ to call numbers that are supposed to be free for the caller. I’ve know about this for a long time, and it’s actually been an issue for me in attempting to connect with certain toll-free services from payphones.

My latest information not only confirms that those newer toll-free numbers do not get recognized as toll-free. It also comes with the extra that no one at CityBridge expects to do anything about it.