TELEPHONE APPARATUS, SYSTEMS, AND PROCESSES TO ENHANCE ACCESS FOR TDD AND/OR TTY DEVICES

A process of transferring a message transferred by a TTY call from a calling party to a called party comprising the following steps: (a) receiving the TTY call in a port adapted to receive the TTY call; (b) recognizing the TTY call as conforming to TTY standards and translating the TTY call to ASCII; (c) initiating a request for the calling party provide identification information to identify the called party and to leave a message and converting the request to conform to the TTY standards to create a converted response, and sending the converted response to the calling party, (d) receiving the identification information to identify the called party and the message, converting the identification information and the message to ASCII to create a converted message; identifying a voice mail box accessible by the called party with the identification information in a voice mail system; (e) converting the message into an audio message; and storing the audio message in the voice mail box. An integrated text based system comprises a telephone network, a private branch exchange, a voice mail system, and a text server. The telephone network receives a TTY call from a calling party using a TTY device to a called party. The TTY call is modem translatable and has information disclosing a format of a calling device being used to initiate the TTY call.