CHAIRMAN REED E. HUNDT FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION KEYNOTE ADDRESS FOR THE ELEVENTH INTERNATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS FOR THE DEAF INCORPORATED(TDI)CONVENTION Cambridge, Massachusetts June 28, 1995 Hello. I'm happy to meet with you today. Thank you for inviting me to your conference. A special thank you to Al ["Sonny"] Sonnenstrahl for inviting me to your "T" party. It is a great honor to be the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. I seriously consider it to be the single best job in the federal government that you don't have to get elected to. It is great fun as well as a high honor to be chairman of the FCC at the time that the communications revolution is carrying the country into the information age. What is even more important, however, is that the chairman of the FCC is entitled to pick one commissioner to be in charge of all our issues related to people with disabilities. As you well know, Alexander Graham Bell had the skills and opportunity to invent the telephone because of his particular profession. He was a teacher of the deaf. So since I have the same birthday as Mr. Bell, I thought I should pick myself as the commissioner with special responsibility to handle our issues that relate to people with disabilities. While I can not invent like Mr. Bell could, I can do my best to make sure others' inventions are accessible to the broadest range of Americans. At the FCC, we do two things: we help set fair rules of competition and we serve the public interest. We have jurisdiction over all lanes of the information highway: wire, wireless, satellite, cable, and broadcast TV and radio. We write the rules of competition for the businesses that are leading our economy into the 21st century. If we get these rules right, we can help create millions of new jobs, tens of billions of dollars of economic growth, a more productive economy. If we can stake a claim for the public in cyberspace, we can make our country not just richer, but better, we can provide new education tools for our children. We can give them the information highway in every classroom in the country. But we have no higher responsibility and no greater calling than making sure that people with disabilities share in the communications revolution. This mission is in itself a sufficient justification for the existence of the Federal Communications Commission. You may have read that the new majority in the Congress has attracted some so-called "think tanks" to the communications field. Some include certain highly paid experts who recently announced to the world that the FCC should be closed down. The entire communications revolution, they said, would continue more quickly if the public interest in communications policy had no advocate at the FCC or anywhere else in government. They say, let the free market roll on unimpeded. But with 20 years of legal practice in antitrust and communications, I can tell you from personal knowledge and experience that markets don't always work efficiently. Without occasional intervention by means of fair rule-writing, and even when they do maximize wealth, markets don't necessarily deliver the social benefits we all want from the communications revolution. The primary problem is this: when we say we want consumer demand to drive the building of the information superhighway, we are saying that the people with the most money to spend will determine what communications technology is developed and where it is delivered. But why shouldn't people who aren't rich enough to buy new communications technology also have a voice in the information age. Some say that the communications sector ought to be just like the computer industry: essentially unaltered by government rules and unheeding of any claim by the public interest. What a bad idea. I have enormous respect for the accomplishments of our computer industry. I am the first chairman of the FCC to have a computer on his desk. I am the first ever to send an e- mail. I have happily presided over the networking of the agency and the creation of our beautiful new site on the Internet. Our World Wide Web address, by the way, is "www.fcc.gov" . Look us up anytime. E-mail me at "rhundt@fcc.gov". But do I want our communications sector, including telephones, broadcast, and cable, to be like today's computer industry? Not hardly. After all, computers are in only one-third of the homes in the country. The rest of the country lacks the money to buy, or the training to run the darn things. On the other hand, telephone service reaches 94% of the country and free TV is available to 99% of our homes. This is due, in large part, to the FCC and its policies of universal service. So if we don't continue in this country to ask the FCC to maintain a policy of universal service and affordable access, we can be assured that the wonders of the communications revolution will, like personal computers, be available to only some Americans. This revolution will be seized by the few and closed off to the many. And we can be assured that most people with disabilities would be left out of the communications revolution. The reason, as I am sure you know, is that people with disabilities tend to earn less money than people without disabilities. According to the Harris survey, almost 60% of households headed by persons with disabilities have incomes of $25,000 or less. If we rely solely on market forces to drive the communications revolution, then people with disabilities will be disenfranchised in the communications revolution. Americans with disabilities then would be denied the basic tools necessary in the Information Age to get an education, to get a job, to share in our cultural experience, to be part of politics, to communicate. The American dream is that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is guaranteed for all Americans. It would be the American nightmare if these rights were available only for some of us. The American dream is a beacon of hope for the world because we dream it together for the benefit of all of us. We would live an American nightmare if each of us were condemned to hope and strive only for our own individual betterment. So we say the FCC should be the Fair Communication for Everyone in the Country Commission: the FCECC. That name is consistent with our historic mission. The Commission has been given special tasks under the Hearing Aid Compatibility Act of 1988, the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. We're proud of these missions. And we're proud of the new jobs that the Senate telecommunications reform bill would give us. The bill requires telecommunications equipment manufacturers and service providers to ensure accessibility by individuals with disabilities, if readily achievable. The FCC is given the responsibility of making rules to reach this goal. Now let's review some recent FCC accomplishments. By June 15, an FCC advisory committee proposed a new set of rules that would dramatically increase access by persons with hearing disabilities to wire telephones. Under the recommended rules, all wireline telephones in the workplace, in confined settings, (such as hospitals and nursing homes), and in hotels and motels eventually will be hearing aid compatible. Since 1989, many people with hearing disabilities and industry groups were deadlocked over how to solve the HAC problem. At last, we have a working basis for a solution. The FCC now will shortly submit these proposed rules for public comment in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. Your comments on these proposals will be welcome. We are also concerned about making wireless telephones hearing aid compatible. On June 15, we put the Hear-It Now petition on wireless phone compatibility on public notice. We will examine the wireless telephone exemption seriously and swiftly. We need your comments. In addition: (1) The Commission's policies have helped create standards for a nationwide telecommunications relay service, or TRS. We project over 150 million minutes of TRS use in 1995. In an order released just this month, we held that optional discount calling plans must be made available to TRS users on an equal basis with non-TRS users. We also said that TRS users cannot be charged more for directory assistance services. In addition, we want to make payphones accessible to TRS users, through such devices as special calling cards and free local calling. (2) The FCC has required that all televisions in the U.S. be equipped with decoder circuitry for closed captioning. (3) The FCC assigned frequencies to be used for assistive listening devices. We propose to create a new low power radio service which will make additional frequencies available for this purpose. (4) And we have ruled that computers with monitors 13 inches or larger must be able to display the closed captions transmitted by television signals. Everyone says Silicon Valley is going to invent the telecomputer that will fuse TVs and PCs. If this is so, we are going to guarantee that this wonderful new invention works for people with disabilities. To tie all our efforts together, I have formed a Disabilities Issues Task Force, with representatives from every FCC office and bureau. Since its inception three months ago, the Task Force has received presentations from folks at Independent Living Centers and from technical experts in ADA enforcement. A few weeks ago, they visited an industry-sponsored center to learn more about technology to assist people with disabilities. The acting head of the Task Force is Karen Brinkman; you should feel free to contact her. Just e- mail "kbrinkma@fcc.gov". Finally, I'd like to share with you my personal "top ten" list -- a wish list of ten things that the FCC might do to make equal access a reality. These are not jokes like David Letterman's top ten list but I'd like them to become just as well known. I frankly don't know if all these things are feasible or practical; but with your help I suggest we find out. Number ten. Hold an "Access 2000" summit with persons with disabilities, industry, and government rulemakers to develop an agenda for action for the next 5 years. Number nine. Ensure that all televised Commission meetings and publicly sponsored Commission events are closed captioned, and provide all Commission publications over the Internet so they can be downloaded in alternative formats, such as braille, enlarged text, and audio text. Number eight. Require permanent labeling on all hearing aid compatible communications equipment. Number seven. Review all the Commission's rules to ensure that advances in network services are accessible to and usable by persons with disabilities. Number six. Explore assignment of N11 codes for TRS access. Number five. Consider assigning permanent, exclusive frequencies for assistive listening devices. Number four. Require volume control on all telephones. Number three. Expand mandatory minimum TRS program standards by: (a) requiring CAs (communication assistants) to relay in specifically requested foreign languages; (b) requiring TTY and Telebraille equipment distribution programs; (c) requiring operator services to access TTY numbers; and (d) requiring audiotext capability. Number two. Ensure that cellular and PCS equipment are hearing aid compatible. And number one. Determine how to get closed captioning for all television and cable programming. And since it is your 11th international convention, I hope you will permit me to add an 11th wish. I would like to see all the classrooms in America connected to the information highway. This, more than anything else, will ensure the opportunities of the communications revolution are available to all. Link each classroom to the information highway and you link each child, each family, each community. Networked classrooms can teach kids job skills, certainly. But especially for children with disabilities, this link is an invaluable way to explore new worlds. Technology can also help them to learn the basics by allowing for something that even the best teachers can't always provide -- it can accommodate their disabilities on an individual level. It can also offer them chances to work more independently, it can increase their self-esteem. It can even give them reasons to learn by linking them across geographic lines to other children -- some who have similar disabilities and others who may simply share a desire for an e-mail penpal. Computers now feature synthetic speech, voice activation, breath activation, virtual reality, and visual icons. All children with disabilities can and should share in all of these promising inventions of the information age. No one thinks Mr. Bell's telephone should have been made available only to those with big bucks. No one should welcome the prospect that the communications inventions of the next century will be available only to the few and not the many of the information age. But we are not going to get a chance to make any of these eleven items a reality if the FCC is going out of existence. When some of the most powerful leaders in Congress say that the FCC should wither away in a few years, they should understand that they are sending a message that the country should do nothing to include people with disabilities in the communications revolution. Is this what they mean? I hope not. By the way, I mentioned that I share a March 3 birthday with Alexander Graham Bell. What is really important about March 3 is that it happens to be the birthday of my six-year old daughter Sara. Her future, and this country's future, depend on how we answer the question before us: Whether the communications revolution will benefit all Americans. So: is that what we want or not? And if we want everyone to benefit, are we willing to take the many practical, important, real steps that will make it so. I'd like my daughter and all other six-year-olds to know that we in this room will devote ourselves to making sure the right answers to these questions are the winning answers. As we celebrate the fifth anniversary of the ADA next month on July 26, let us renew our commitment to realizing its principle. And let us work together to achieve solutions that will make all our children proud of all of us.