Not switched on
Video remote interpreting for sign language is switched off on this platform, and will stay off until it meets the standard below and ASL interpreters have told us it does.
We could turn it on today. The software exists and would appear to work. What we cannot yet say is that it holds a sharp enough image of moving hands, under a bad hospital connection, for long enough to get through an appointment — and for sign language that is not a detail, it is the whole service.
There is a long history of substandard video being used to avoid paying for an interpreter in the room. We would rather be the platform that said no for a while than another entry on that list.
Quoted rather than summarised, because the wording is specific in ways a summary loses — and because the requirement runs in both directions. The interpreter must see the deaf person as clearly as the reverse. 28 CFR 35.160(d) and 36.303(f), carried into health care by Section 1557.
Real-time, full-motion video and audio over a dedicated high-speed, wide-bandwidth video connection or wireless connection that delivers high-quality video images that do not produce lags, choppy, blurry, or grainy images, or irregular pauses in communication.
What we hold ourselves to: A measured floor of 25 frames per second sustained, not averaged, and end-to-end latency under 200 milliseconds. Below either, the session warns both sides rather than continuing quietly.
A sharply delineated image that is large enough to display the interpreter's face, arms, hands, and fingers, and the face, arms, hands, and fingers of the person using sign language, regardless of body position.
What we hold ourselves to: 720p or better per participant, and a layout that never crops to a head and shoulders — which is the single most common way a provider claims compliance while delivering none.
A clear, audible transmission of voices.
What we hold ourselves to: The hearing side of the room is part of the appointment, and audio that drops is a failed session even when the video is perfect.
Adequate training to users of the technology and other involved individuals so that they may quickly and efficiently set up and operate the VRI.
What we hold ourselves to: One link, no install, no account, and a test call that can be run before the appointment rather than during it.
Not us. The gate is a group of working ASL interpreters running real sessions on the connections they actually get — a clinic wifi, a phone on cellular, a courthouse network — and saying whether it holds.
When it does, video is free for sign language on this platform. Not discounted and not a trial: free, permanently. Video is the only thing here that costs us money to run, and that is exactly why saying so means something.
If you interpret in ASL and would test it, write to hello@interpdirect.org. We are not asking for an endorsement — we are asking you to try to break it and tell us what broke.
Everything that is not video is live and free: your public page, the code clients scan, requests by name, the status page a requester watches on the morning, the expense record, and the notes and photographs of how to get into a building. None of that depends on video, and none of it is waiting on this page.
A direct line between interpreters and the people who book them. No agency in the middle, no account to create, and nothing to install — every page here opens in a browser.
The interpreter sets their own rate and keeps it. Our fee is $4.00 a session, or $19.00/month and $2.00 — video is free, taken from the interpreter's side and never added to yours.