Your Home PC as a TTY Machine

I have a few friends from church who are deaf, and, because my daughter's hard of hearing, we've been able to meet many others in the deaf and hard of hearing community in Dayton, Ohio USA:

Usually when I call one of these deaf friends I have to do it through the Ohio Relay Service; I simply dial 711, and the relay attendant (a human) takes me through the process to call my friend's TTY machine. The relay individual then reads what the TTY user types and types what I say in return.

I've been wondering whether TTY software exists that I could somehow transform my home PC into a TTY machine. So I Googled and found a post about such a thing in the AllDeaf.com forum. The group over there recommends the service that NextTalk.net provides. The great thing about it is that the service is free! You do have to register and download their software, but you can call a TTY user with it.

I have since tried it out on my three friends from church and found out that it works!

AT&T has a relay service via the internet that enables a deaf or speech-impaired person communicate with someone else without a TTY machine. Their website is http://relay.att.com.