Working Through the Pain: ASL interpreters sacrifice their physical and mental health at large corporate firms

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American Sign Language (ASL) interpreting is harder than most people think, if they have ever thought about it at all. Listening to someone speak English or Spanish and simultaneously using one’s hands to translate into sign language is mentally and physically taxing in most settings, but in Video Relay Service (VRS), academic studies and interpreters working for large corporations report serious health and safety risks that lead to burnout and a manufactured interpreter shortage that plagues the industry and hurts Deaf consumers. 

As outlined in PESP’s 2024 report on the VRS industry, in recent years, Sorenson Communications and ZP Better Together have controlled the overwhelming majority of the VRS market; their private equity owners, which have been focused on rapid profit expansion, have largely shaped the industry. Under this system, interpreters who make the firms run and those who rely on the service have suffered, even as federal funds paid to these companies has greatly increased in an effort to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The 2024 report detailed significant problems with interpreters’ working conditions that has since led interpreters to launch an organizing campaign with the Office of Professional Employees’ International Union (OPEIU) in September 2024. Interpreters have spent months organizing their coworkers, speaking out about working conditions, decrying problems facing the Deaf community, and seeking to meet with their employers and their corporate owners. As of this writing, Sorenson’s private equity owners, Ariel and Blackstone, and ZP Better Together’s owner, Teleperformance, have refused to meet with these interpreters about working conditions and collective bargaining rights. Sorenson has openly opposed unionization, stating publicly that the company “is working to remain free of third-party representation,” in March 2025. Teleperformance signed a global framework on labor rights with UNI Global Union in 2022, but has not yet responded to demands from OPEIU that it apply these labor commitments to its employees in the United States. 

PESP has continued to investigate the VRS industry since the release of our 2024 report and learned about troubling working conditions. Such conditions may contribute to the interpreter shortage and a cycle driving more interpreters out of the VRS industry, worsening the shortage, and putting more pressure on the interpreters that remain to maintain this crucial service for the Deaf community. 

Key Takeaways

1. Video Relay Service (VRS) is a critical translation tool that facilitates everyday communication for Deaf users. 
2. VRS is federally funded through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which regulates and provides reimbursements to private service providers per minute of service. 
3. Two companies with a history of private equity ownership dominate the VRS market: Sorenson Communications and ZP Better Together. Both firms have refused to meet with interpreters that are organizing a union to improve working conditions and quality of service to Deaf users. 
4. Academic research shows a serious crisis faced by VRS interpreters employed by these two companies caused by unsafe working conditions that has caused many interpreters to limit hours or leave VRS altogether in the midst of a national interpreter shortage. 
5. PESP interviewed interpreters and academics about health and safety in the industry and found a concerning pattern of interpreters working at an intense pace and many suffering serious physical and mental health problems. 
6. Interpreters reported working grueling shifts while in physical pain, without sufficient breaks that are normal in other types of interpreting. 
7. When interpreters are working with high levels of physical and mental stress and experienced interpreters leave the industry in large numbers, the quality of service for the Deaf community suffers. 
8. The two major VRS providers have not adequately addressed working conditions, even as the FCC has significantly increased the amount the companies are paid for providing such an important service. 
9. Both VRS providers and the FCC have a responsibility to engage with interpreters and deaf users of VRS in good faith discussions to improve wages and working conditions of interpreters and quality of service to VRS users. 

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