Question: Can you recommend a free phone captioning service for people with hearing impairments?

If you're looking for a free phone captioning service, ClearCaptions is worth a look. It offers near real-time captions of caller conversations on your phone, home phone or mobile device. The service is free for eligible, hard-of-hearing US residents who qualify, and is intended to help people maintain independence and confidence in phone conversations.

Another service worth considering is Ava, which offers live captioning and transcription for videoconferences and in-person meetings. Ava uses AI and human captioners to create real-time captions and supports multiple platforms. It also offers multilingual translation and offline mode, so it can be used in a variety of situations, including education and health care.

If you're looking for help beyond phone calls, Be My Eyes connects blind and low-vision people with sighted volunteers and businesses. It's geared more toward visual impairments, but it's still got a pretty useful accessibility tool set that can help with communication and daily living. The service offers live video support and AI-powered tools that can help in a variety of situations, so it can be useful for people with hearing impairments, too.

Last, ScribeBuddy offers free, multilingual audio and video transcription, translation and subtitle generation. It works on multiple platforms, offers high accuracy and requires no subscription. It's geared more toward general transcription needs, but it can be useful to boost accessibility in some situations.