What is the Federal Relay Service (FRS)?

The Federal Relay Service (FRS) was established under Public Law 100-542, the Telecommunications Accessibility Act of 1988. FRS provides Communication Assistants (CA) who act as intermediaries for telecommunications between hearing individuals and individuals who are Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing, Deaf-Blind, and/or have speech disabilities.

FRS is a Federal government service, which utilizes the FTS2001 network in order to allow Federal employees who are Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing, Deaf-Blind and or have speech disabilities equal communication access. These employees use a Text-Telephone (TTY) to communicate with hearing federal employees who do not have a TTY. Calls are relayed using specially trained Communication Assistants (CA). The CA acts as a transparent conduit for the transmittal of information. The CA is simply relaying the conversation back and forth from the TTY user to the regular telephone user.