UK ISP Cuckoo Broadband Adds Support for Sign Language Users
Internet provider Cuckoo (Giganet) has moved to make its customer service more accessible by agreeing a new partnership with Sign Solutions, which means that customers who are deaf can now contact the broadband ISP using British Sign Language (BSL) via a video interpreter.
The move is said to complement the provider’s wider “efforts to make broadband fairer for all.”Cuckoo already donate 1% of each customer’s bill to Jangala, a not-for-profit that helps get the internet to refugee camps, natural disaster sites and even disadvantaged communities in the UK.
Otherwise, the new solution sees Cuckoo integrating Sign Solutions’ InterpreterLive! service, which is available to customers via both web and mobile platforms.
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Tommy Toner, Co-founder, VP of Product and Brand, said:
“We’re delighted to offer this service to our customers that communicate using British Sign Language. We’re on a mission to become the UK’s fastest, fairest broadband provider, and accessibility plays a huge role in that.
Speaking with customer service teams should be easy. Where other broadband providers often make this difficult with annoying hold music and lengthy waiting times we’re making it as simple as possible – even for those in the deaf community.”
End.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Text chat has been existent and widely used for more than a decade yet these idiots come up with a worse solution and believe it serves good PR
You seem far too angry about this. If you aren’t a Giganet customer then it’s costing you nothing, and gives people an option to communicate that they previously didn’t have.
If a company makes a poor decision then no one can criticize unless they are a customer? Bizarre take
It does seem like a move that doesn’t really warrant angry criticism. Clearly, they don’t think it’s a poor decision, but it’s also unlikely to be costing them masses of money due to the limited number of potential users. Nothing wrong with giving customers more choice in how they communicate, that’s a good thing.
As someone whose hard of hearing & uses the relay uk app quite a lot this is a very very good thing. I don’t see why John sees this as a bad thing, perhaps he could explain.
Text chat = literally anyone can do it without needing any special skills nor waiting time
I’m not deaf and I rather text, get an AI to send me to correct department and then have a human text back within minutes than calling, get sorted by autocaller, then waiting half an hour to get through to a human and then not having a record of the call
So many companies have been burned by posting screens of the conversation. Recently Tide by cancelling the account of Konstantin Kisin
Cuckoo hasn’t said they’ll stop their asynchronous chat, just that they are also adding support for deaf users. As a hearing person, you not being able to use a sign language interpreting service is completely irrelevant?
Seems John just doesn’t understand that some people, whether they find it easy to communicate or not, just prefer to actually feel like they are conversing with a human, not a machine. Text chat is fine, but not everybody likes it and it isn’t a suitable solution for every person and every problem. It’s fantastic to see a company stepping out and actively giving their customers more ways to talk to them – it’s what any company that actually cares about good customer service should be doing.
Whether one particular customer doesn’t like it is not relevant – if one other customer does, it SHOULD be an option. A company that cares about customer service will make it as easy as possible for anyone to talk to them.
British Sign Language, which is some people’s first language, has a different syntax and grammar to English. You can sign in English, but this is referred to as Sign Supported English.
To offer a service, to often marginalised users, is a good thing. To force them to use text chat, in English, is not the ideal alternative for all D/deaf users you think it is as they will not be communicating in their first language.
Responses like a John’s are typical of those who think they understand the needs of everyone by only considering if it works for them.
Not ‘literally anyone’ John. There are lots of people with cerebral palsy who have a hearing impairment and difficulties with reading and writing. You have an astonishing lack of empathy, heaping criticism upon a service simply because it doesn’t benefit you.
100% what Prism says. BSL is many people’s first language. English is a different language. It is unequivocally a good thing to support users in their primary language.
@John
You say you aren’t deaf John, you are, to other peoples needs. Such a selfish attitude.
They need to sort the Database. Still saying only 100mb is available when BT FTTP is here – I told them about it 6 months ago! Shame i wanted to use them too
Is that not Openreach’s issue to resolve? It’s their database that Cuckoo and any other provider will be querying…
Anybody noticed that Cuckoo no longer offer FTTC services FTTP.