That video relay system sounds as though it would be ideal for deaf people, as they can then use their own beautiful and expressive "native language" and not have to deal with typing words on a machine. For many profoundly deaf people who were born deaf (prelingually deaf), acquisition and use of oral and written language is very difficult and frustrating, if not at times impossible, so being able to simply Sign back-and-forth with family and friends through the relay system video would be perfect!
I've always been right in the middle between the Deaf and Hearing worlds, not being profoundly deaf, but also not being able to hear normally, due to congenital bilateral conductive loss. When I was very small, I went to an Oral school in Pittsburgh, PA, for several years. When I reached the age of six, when it was determined that I was "responsible enough now" to take care of a hearing aid, I was fitted with my first bone-conduction aid... Whew, thankfully that mode of thinking has long since gone by the wayside and now they put hearing aids on children the minute there is the realization that there is a hearing loss of some sort! Never mind "taking care of the hearing aid," let's just get the kid started hearing to whatever extent is possible as early as possible, which is so important for language acquisition and development of communication and other skills. So the kid throws the hearing aid across the room? (Not uncommon with infants and toddlers!) Fine, it can be repaired and/or replaced.....
The other thing which they did back then in the early 1950's and even through the 1970's and into the 1980's was to frown upon public and visible use of Sign. When I was at the Oral school, the nuns would smack our hands if they caught us signing, and we kids quickly learned how to be sneaky with that. This attitude, though, on the part of the personnel at the school also implied and sent a message loud and clear (didn't need to be hearing to pick up on it!) that there was something shameful and wrong about Sign, using it to connect with each other. True, we were in an Oral school, where verbal communication was being taught and encouraged, but realistically, for some kids that just wasn't going to work, simply was not possible. Those kids were so frustrated. The prevailing attitude at the school was, though, that Oral communication (lipreading, speaking) was the best way, the only way, and we were there to learn and to use it. Anything else wasn't appropriate, which is really an awful thing to do to kids, especially those for whom ASL, sign language, actually did offer the most effective means of communication!
Since I was able to kinda/sorta hear, especially after receiving my first bone-conduction hearing aid, and definitely able to speak, I didn't use Sign on a regular basis -- definitely not at home! -- and once I had left that school I pretty much forgot the signs I did know. Many years later, working at the library branch that had the TTY, it was suggested that learning Sign would be good, too, and I was encouraged to take a couple of classes in an adult ed program focusing on Signed English with some ASL thrown in. That first few weeks of the first course though, I found myself with a surprising internal emotional struggle as I tried to push past old memories and attitudes from the past...This was wrong, I wasn't supposed to Sign, this was BAD..... Memories flooded into my head: the Good Sisters suddenly appearing around corners of buildings (we didn't hear them coming!) and immediately smacking the hands of everyone who had been busily signing to each other..... In the classroom, a ruler smacked the fast-moving signing fingers, too. So, yeah, it took me a bit longer than it did most of my classmates in that adult ed classroom to finally, really, feel comfortable signing both in class and later when we went out in public somewhere to practice, too...... The instructor, a post-lingually deaf woman who had had her own negative experiences in Deaf School, was great -- she immediately related to what I was feeling and why, and that helped enormously.
It was just the way things were back in the late 1940's and early 1950's and of course at the time it made perfect sense to my parents to send me to an Oral school as opposed to one which was more focused on Sign, since I was not profoundly deaf and they were both hearing, but those years at the Oral school did have an impact on me.... Even now I shudder to think of the much more painful and significant impact it would have had on kids who were profoundly deaf who really would have benefitted from being in a school where ASL was the customary language right from the get-go.....
Of course I also learned a lot and really did benefit, too, from that Oral school, both in learning to lipread and to speak more clearly, as well as how to manage and live with a hearing aid, all of which helped throughout the rest of my life, but those other memories still haunt me....
I love how now in today's society it is perfectly fine for deaf people to be out somewhere in public together and signing busily away to each other and no one else stares, frowns or thinks much about it..... Communication has also been greatly improved for all of us through Smartphone and other technology and certainly those of us who are hearing-impaired to different degrees and the profoundly deaf have benefited a lot from that, too. Hearing-impaired eople's needs are taken into consideration from the get-go, from birth, and that makes such a difference.....
