SPEECH BY REED HUNDT CHAIRMAN FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION UNIVERSAL ACCESS PROJECT FORUM ON UNIVERSAL DESIGN WASHINGTON, D.C. (AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY) OCTOBER 27, 1995 EQUAL ACCESS FOR ALL It is a pleasure to be with you today. The three Partners of the Universal Access Project -- the World Institute on Disability, the Trace Center, and the CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media -- are doing important work, as evidenced by this forum. I want to thank Deborah Kaplan from the World Institute and Larry Goldberg from WGBH who have both been guests of our Disabilities Task Force and have added great value to our work. I also want to thank Gregg Vanderheiden, the third partner in this Universal Access Project, for this kind invitation. Marlee Matlin, the deaf actress who won an Oscar for her role in the film "Children of a Lesser God," dreamed of growing up to be like characters she saw on television. "But," she said, "in many of my dreams, I sat by and watched without understanding a single word of what was being said . . . There was no such thing as closed-captioned television, and those moments of dreaming were not open to me." There are 49 million Americans with disabilities. Twenty-three million have hearing disabilities. Over 8 million have vision disabilities. People with disabilities are one of the lowest income groups in the United States. More than 60% are unemployed. Nearly 4 million are school-age children. That's 6% of all school-age children. The Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990 was a watershed event. The goals of ADA are to "assure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency." These are the FCC's goals also. The FCC may be the single agency with the greatest ability to help people with disabilities to participate in our society. That's because we are becoming an information economy and an information society. The FCC has a twin mission: we are for private competition in communications, and for public benefit from communications. As to private competition, this is the most deregulatory, procompetitive, rules- simplifying, market oriented FCC in the history of the agency. As to public benefits, we are the most demonopolizing, consumer-aware, family- friendly FCC in history. We want to be the most effective FCC ever in making sure people with disabilities share in the communications revolution. Building the information superhighway will not be a success unless we recognize the vital importance of equal access to the telecommunications revolution for everyone. Perhaps the single most important thing we can do for all children, but especially for children with disabilities, is to network every school and classroom in the country. Networked classrooms can teach kids jobs skills. For children with disabilities, this link is an invaluable way to explore new worlds. Technology can also help them 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. That's why the Snowe-Rockefeller-Exon-Kerrey provision of the Telecommunications Reform bill is so important. It would permit the FCC to create financial incentives that will build networks into every classroom in the country, and networks between every school in a school district. Communications technology can also permit children with disabilities to learn in ways specifically crafted to their potential. PC should not stand for personal computer, but personalized computer. For example, computers now feature synthetic speech, voice activation, breath activation, virtual reality, and visual icons. An added benefit is that these innovations can help parents communicate with teachers, which is especially important for children with disabilities. It is widely assumed in this country that we benefit from the fact that on the air broadcast TV is a public good accessible to everyone. One of the key reasons why I think we need more educational TV on broadcast stations is that those programs could be free and available to everyone. But this widely held assumption is not completely true. People with disabilities don't have access to everything on TV. The prime time commercial TV shows are captioned. But non-prime time is a mixed bag. As far as we can tell, outside of prime time, only about 50% nationwide of shows are captioned. This is not acceptable. Moreover, even to the extent that commercial networks are captioning on a voluntary basis, there is no assurance that that will continue. The Department of Education provides 40% of captioning funding. In 1995, that meant $7.9 million funded captioning, but in the current fiscal environment, will this funding continue? Moreover, Americans are increasingly watching cable TV. But only 4% of cable programming is closed captioned. This means that cable continues to be largely inaccessible for people with disabilities. Closed captioning and video description services are the best means to provide access to TV for the hearing and visually disabled. In fact, according to the Commission on the Education of the Deaf, closed captioning is the "most significant technological development for persons who are deaf." A more recent innovation intended to assist people with visual impairments is video description. Developed by WGBH in Boston, video descriptions, as you've seen earlier in this forum, provide audio descriptions of a program's key visual elements that are inserted during the natural pauses in the program's dialogue. There is as of now no statutory mandate that programming be closed captioned or video described. However, both the Senate and House have passed bills which would require the FCC to adopt regulations to ensure that video programming be accessible to people with hearing disabilities through the closed captioning. That would benefit the 23 million hearing disabled people. The House bill contains a provision that the FCC "may adopt regulations...to promote the accessibility of video programming to persons with visual impairments." There should be no partisanship when it comes to doing the right thing for Americans with disabilities. It is morally important that this language in the House bill become the law of the land. I urge the broadcasting and cable industries to insist that they be subject to a law requiring closed captioning, so that TV can truly be available to everyone. The FCC has a long history of taking actions to ensure that the communications revolution will benefit Americans with disabilities. For example: -- In 1970, we alerted television licensees to the special needs of persons with hearing disabilities and we urged them to take steps to make it easier for these people to hear and see programming. -- In the 1970s, the FCC authorized PBS to conduct experimental transmissions using closed captioning. -- In 1976, the FCC adopted rules providing that line 21 of the vertical blanking interval of the television signal be primarily used to transmit closed captioning. That same year, the FCC adopted a rule requiring TV licensees to transmit emergency messages in a visual format. -- In 1991, to implement the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990, the FCC adopted regulations requiring all television broadcast receivers with screen sizes of 13 inches or larger to be capable of receiving and displaying closed captions. -- In 1992, the ADA required common carriers offering telephone voice transmission services to provide telecommunications relay services (TRS) for individuals with hearing and speech disabilities. This service is still growing at 2% a month, making it the fastest growing telecommunications service in the country. -- And in 1993, the FCC strongly encouraged cable operators to carry more closed-captioned video programming. -- This past spring, we initiated a Negotiated Rulemaking to resolve wireline Hearing Aid Compatibility regulations. -- To enable persons with disabilities to communicate directly with the FCC, I established an FCC site on the Internet. We now get some 14,000 hits a day on our Web page. I also had PCs and an electronic network installed at the FCC so all of us can communicate with each other. And, of course, we can be reached by TTY. -- And in March of this year I created the Disabilities Task Force, and designated myself Disabilities Issues Commissioner. The purpose of the Task Force is to monitor developments in all fields regulated by the FCC and to ensure that new technologies are available to the broadest range of Americans, including the millions of people with disabilities. The Task Force is one of the FCC's most important tools to ensure that our country does not become a nation of information haves and have-nots. The Task Force is headed by Linda Dubroof. She and her talented staff are equally committed to equal access for all. One of the Task Force's most important objectives is to urge companies to get it right at the design stage. That is, we want to educate companies to the necessity and to the social and financial benefits of universal access design right from the start. The recent willingness of Bill Gates and Microsoft to design for universal access is a hopeful example of voluntary action in the marketplace. Including universal access principles during the design phase avoids costly retrofitting or expensive auxiliary user devices. It permits persons with disabilities to take full advantage of advances in technology and services such as PCS, the Internet, e-mail, and electronic banking. An example is making information on the Internet and World Wide Web available in both text and graphic formats. People seem to be into "top ten lists" these days, and I have my own List of the Top Ten Activities the FCC should accomplish to facilitate access for persons with disabilities. Here it is: #10. Hold an "Access 2000" summit with persons with disabilities, industry, and government regulators to develop an agenda for action for the next 5 years. #9. Ensure that all televised FCC meetings and publicly sponsored FCC events are closed-captioned and provide all FCC publications in alternative formats, including braille, enlarged text, and audio text. #8. Modify Part 68 of the rules to require permanent labeling on all telephones to identify that they are hearing aid compatible. #7. Conduct a study to determine whether the Commission's regulations ensure that advances in network services are accessible to and usable by persons with disabilities. #6. Ensure that N11 ("N-one-one") codes (511 and 711) are assigned to access TRS. #5. Assign permanent, exclusive frequencies for assistive listening devices. #4. Modify Part 68 to require volume control on all telephones (payphones are already required, under the Americans with Disabilities Act, to provide volume control). #3. Expand mandatory minimum Telecommunications Relay Service program standards by: (a) requiring communication assistants (CAs) to relay in specifically requested foreign languages. (b) requiring TTY and Telebraille equipment distribution programs. (c) requiring operator services to access TTY numbers. #2. Require cellular and PCS equipment to be hearing aid compatible. And #1. Require closed captioning for all television and cable programming. Earlier this month the FCC established a new policy for its open meetings -- they will all be closed-captioned. You can thank the Disabilities Task Force for that. It is their first accomplishment, and there will be many more to follow. We have drafted a Notice of Inquiry to assess the current availability, cost, and uses of closed captioning and video description. In my view, this NOI will lay the groundwork to implement the language I hope will emerge in the Telecommunications Reform bill out of conference. Innovations that are designed or used by people with disabilities also prove to be good things for people without disabilities. Captioning and the Decoder Chip are a perfect examples...captioning helps people in high noise environments "see TV," it helps children learn to read, it helps non-reading adults learn to read and it helps people whose first language is not English, understand and learn language skills. Let me tell you a story that drives this innovation point home. In 1888, William Ellsworth Hoy reported for spring training with the Washington Senators. He happened to be the first hearing disabled major leaguer. Now, Hoy was a centerfielder, and in order to avoid collisions with his fellow outfielders, he taught them signs, and they all started using them. Hoy's use of visual language was picked up by all the coaches in the game. Now everyone uses hand signals in baseball. The point is the benefits of opening up the communications revolution to everyone can be greater than you think. But the biggest benefit is this -- we will all live in a fairer, better, prouder, more moral society if we commit to make the American Dream of opportunity be available for all. The opportunities of the communications revolution are limitless. There should be no limits on who has those opportunities. That is why the Marlee Matlins should be able to watch a TV that she can understand. We will be improving all our lives by committing to that goal. Thank you. wc-2106 -FCC-