The Telephone Relay Service puts an interpreting operator between someone with a hearing or speech disability and a party reachable only by phone, such as a business or a government office. The operator interprets between sign language or text and speech, so both sides take part in the same live call. The user signs on video or types to the operator, who passes it on by voice, and the reply comes back the same way in reverse.
In Japan the service began in July 2021 as public infrastructure under the Act on Facilitation of Telephone Use by Persons with Hearing Disabilities. It is run by the Nippon Foundation Telephone Relay Service, the provider designated by the Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications, and is available 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Emergency calls are covered as well, reaching 110 (police), 119 (fire and ambulance) and 118 (the Japan Coast Guard), so a user can contact the emergency services directly instead of finding someone to call on their behalf.
What often gets overlooked is that hearing people can place calls in this direction too. On registering, a user is issued a dedicated phone number beginning 050, and once that number is passed on, a shop or a clinic can ring the user. No registration is needed on the hearing side. That is where a practical pitfall sits: blocking every number that starts with 050 also blocks anything coming through the relay service. Because interpretation into sign language or text takes a moment, the pauses are longer than on a voice-only call, yet the call is working normally. Whether the person on the other end remembers this before hanging up on an unfamiliar number makes all the difference. Video is used much as it is in a video call, but here the purpose is interpretation.
Costs come in two layers. The interpreting itself carries no fee, and what the user pays is the call charge. As of 2026 there is a choice between a plan with no monthly fee and a plan that charges one in return for lower per-minute rates. The amounts are revised under the scheme, so the current figures should be checked with the provider. The funding behind the service works on the same principle as universal service charges: a levy collected from everyone who holds a phone number. That is the line appearing on mobile and landline bills under a heading such as "telephone relay service charge".
The point of all this is that people effectively shut out of the telephone now have equivalent access to it. Hospital appointments, government paperwork and enquiries to companies that take nothing but phone calls can be handled directly. For which number to use in an emergency, see the emergency number guide.