There absolutely was a service like this, including a TTY-relay service (where an operator read the responses from the TTY to the recipient and translated their replies back to the TTY, in cases where the recipient didn’t have a TTY device on their end), but this was in the analog telephony days, and specific to Canada. I have no idea if these things still exist, but I will absolutely assume that someone who is Deaf is aware of the options available to them and had tried them to no avail, and/or that they weren’t appropriate or available in this instance. I’ve seen enough of the patchwork hacky ways visible or mobility disabilities are handled in the US, let alone services for the Deaf, hard of hearing, or less physically obvious disabilities have been, to know that there is a very high likelihood that support for the Deaf has fallen through the cracks here.
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