Voice and text transmission system

A system for assisting a user in telephonic communications with a hearing user, the system adapted to communicate with an assisted user station capable of displaying text for the assisted user, the system comprising

• a relay capable of converting spoken voice received over the first telephonic connection into text;
• a first telephonic connection between the hearing user and a relay;
• a second telephonic connection between the relay and the station of the assisted user;
• the relay programmed to created a series of digital data packets for transmission to the station of the assisted user over the second telephonic connection, each of the digital packets including digitized voice of the hearing users and at least some of the digital data packets including text of the words spoken by the hearing user.

A method capable of transmitting both voice and text of words over a telephonic connection to facilitate a conversation between two users, the method comprising the steps of

• digitizing the voice of a first of the users;
• generating a digital text corresponding to the words spoken by the first of the users;
• combining the digitized voice and the digital text into digital data packets, at least some of the digital data packets having at least one byte of digitized voice data and at least some of the digital data packets having at least one byte of text representing a character in the text of the words spoken by the first user, each packet including a format character indicating the format of that packet so that packets of differing format can be sent in a single communication session;
• and
• transmitting the combined packets to the station of the second user over a telephone connection so that the station of the second user can supply text to the second user of the words spoken by the first user.