Systems, communication endpoints, and related methods for distributing images corresponding to communication endpoints

A video communication device for an audibly impaired user, the video communication device comprising:

• communication elements;
• an electronic display;
• an image capturing device;
• a data storage device;
• and
• control circuitry operably coupled with the communication elements, the electronic display, the image capturing device, and the data storage device, the control circuitry configured to:
• manage a first contacts list for the video communication device and communicate changes to the first contacts list with a remote server, wherein the first contacts list includes contacts corresponding to other video communication devices of a network;
• receive images from the remote server, the images corresponding to the contacts in the first contacts list;
• store the images and a corresponding image privacy setting locally in the data storage of the video communication device;
• display the images with the first contacts list on the electronic display;
• and
• remove one or more of the images from being associated with first contacts of the contacts list and deleting the one or more images from its local image database stored in the data storage of the video communication device responsive to receiving instructions from the remote server indicating a change in the image privacy setting for the one or more images responsive to a user input from another user of one or more of the other video communication devices of the network.

A video communication system comprising:

• video communication devices associated with audibly impaired users;
• a video relay service including one or more servers configured to:
• manage user accounts for the audibly impaired users;
• store contacts lists for each user account in a contacts lists database;
• store images and corresponding image privacy settings for each user account in an images database;
• and
• reconcile changes made to the images database with each of the video communication devices by:
• transmitting new or updated images to a subset of the video communication devices according to their corresponding image privacy settings for local storage and display in the contacts lists by the respective video communication devices;
• and
• instructing the subset of the video communication devices to delete local images stored locally by the video communication devices responsive to a change being made to their corresponding image privacy settings responsive to changes made by users of other video communication devices on their own video communication devices.