A service that allows persons with hearing or speech disabilities to place and receive telephone calls through human operators who serve as facilitators. A speechor hearing-disabled person initiating a TRS call uses a teletypewriter (TTY) or other text input device to call the TRS relay center and gives the communications assistant (CA) the destination telephone number, which the CA uses to place a traditional telephone call. The CA then serves as a translator, relaying the text of the calling party in voice to the called party, and converting the voice of the called party into text for the benefit of the caller.There are a number of variations on the basic text-to-voice and voice-to-text theme of TRS: