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A telephone handset above a row of keys, marking a textphone.
Also known as: TTY symbol, TDD symbol, Textphone symbol, Minicom symbol
A handset above a keyboard marks a text telephone — a device that carries typed conversation over a phone line. It is the older of the deaf telephony marks, and much of what it once signposted has moved to relay services and messaging.
Indicates that a text telephone is available, allowing a typed conversation to be carried over a telephone line.
Contexts: Public information
Also marks a relay service, in which an operator or automated service converts between typed text and speech so that a text user and a voice user can hold one conversation.
Contexts: Public information
Marks a declining technology: the role it signposts has largely shifted to internet relay, video relay and ordinary messaging, so the symbol is now met more often on older signage than on new.
Widespread from the 1970s; declining from the 2010s · Contexts: Public information
Marks a textphone — a telephone with a keyboard and a display, used by deaf and speech-impaired callers over the ordinary telephone network. The equipment has largely been overtaken by relay services running on mobile apps and by video relay, so the sign is increasingly encountered on old signage with nothing behind it.
1970s onward, declining from the 2010s · Contexts: Public information
Is worth reading as a pointer to a service rather than a device. Where an organisation still shows it, the practical question is which relay service it accepts, and that is written beside the sign rather than in it.
Contexts: Public information
A telephone handset shown in profile above a rectangular block ruled into small squares suggesting a keyboard.