When a crisis service isn't accessible

Most crisis services publish one route: a phone number, answered by voice, in real time. If you are Deaf, hard of hearing, blind, partially sighted, or a phone call does not work for you for any other reason, that single route being the only one advertised does not mean it is the only one that exists.

This page is about the routes underneath the phone number, and what to do when a service has not bothered to publish them.

Sign language routes

Some services offer a route through British Sign Language directly, usually by video, rather than through an interpreter added afterwards. Where this exists on a listed contact, it is marked as a sign language option so you do not have to ring a voice line to find out whether it does.

Find services with a sign language route →

Text relay and textphone

Two different things, worth telling apart because the wording on a service's own page is often vague about which it offers:

• Textphone (sometimes called TTY) is a dedicated device or app that lets you type your side of a call and read the other person's reply as text, in something close to real time.
• Text relay (in the UK, Relay UK) puts a human relay assistant between you and the service: you type, they read it aloud to the hearing person on the other end, and they type back what is said. It works over a standard phone line with the Relay UK app or by dialling 18001 before the number, and it means you can reach a voice-only line even when the organisation itself has not built anything specifically for you.

If a service's listed contact only shows a phone number, Relay UK is often still usable even though the organisation has not mentioned it — it works on any UK phone number, not only ones a service has specifically configured for it.

Find services with a textphone or relay route →

Easy read and plain information

Some organisations mark part of their information as available in accessible formats, including easy read, as a matter of course — larger text, simpler sentences, and images alongside text. Where a listed service offers this, it is flagged on the contact rather than left for you to discover by asking.

This matters beyond blindness and low vision: easy read also helps people with a learning disability, some autistic people, and anyone reading in a second language, at exactly the moment concentration is hardest to come by.

When the only published route is voice

This happens a lot, and it does not mean nothing else is available — usually it means nobody updated the website.

1. Try Relay UK first, before assuming the line is closed to you

   It works on almost any voice line without the organisation needing to have set anything up. Dial 18001 before their number, or use the Relay UK app.

2. Ask someone to make the call and stay on it with you

   Not instead of you being heard — with you, so you can type or write what you need said and they relay it, and you are still the one making the decisions.

3. Use text or webchat if the organisation offers it anywhere

   Even if it is not advertised as the crisis route, a general enquiries text number or webchat sometimes reaches the same team, or can point you to the right one. Text and chat services →

4. Say plainly what you need, once you are through

   "I'm Deaf and I need this in writing," or "I'm blind and I need you to read that out rather than send a link," is a complete sentence. A service that cannot meet it on the spot should be able to tell you who can.

Asking a service directly

It is a reasonable question to put to any organisation, not an imposition: "Do you have a textphone number, a relay-friendly line, or a way to do this in writing?" Services that have one but have not put it on their homepage will usually just answer it.

More wording you can use →

If a listed contact is wrong

If you find a service on this site whose textphone, relay or sign language route no longer works, or whose easy read information is missing, that is worth telling us — a route that has quietly stopped working is worse than one that was never listed, because it costs someone time in the exact moment they have least of it.

The directory reflects this properly

Contact routes on this site are tagged by what they actually are — sign language, text relay, textphone, phone, text message, email — rather than lumped together as "phone" with a note underneath. Filtering by the type of contact you need, rather than reading through descriptions hoping one mentions it, is the point of building it that way.

Find help by the way you can actually use it →