At the UPA 2008 Conference in Baltimore, Karen Peltz Strauss, of the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Telecommunications, gave of presentation on telecommunications accessibility and policy for people with hearing disabilities. She described different access options as well as US laws and regulations.
- Access to telecommunications and US telecommunications policy for people with disabilities (ppt, 736K)
About the speaker
Karen Peltz Strauss is considered one of the nation’s leading legal advocates for telecommunications access for people with disabilities. Over the past 25 years, she has spearheaded numerous pieces of federal legislation requiring access to telephones and television, including laws on telecommunications relay services, closed captioning, and hearing aid compatibility. In March of 2007, she co-founded the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology, or COAT, a coalition of nearly 200 national and regional organizations dedicated to ensuring disability access to emerging Internet-based and digital communications technologies in the 21 st century. Strauss currently provides consulting services to relay service providers, consumer groups, and research institutes, including the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Telecommunications Access. Her previous work includes serving as legal counsel for Gallaudet University’s National Center for Law and Deafness, the National Association of the Deaf, and the FCC, where as Deputy Bureau Chief for its Consumer Information Bureau, she helped initiate its first Disability Rights Office. Strauss is the author of A New Civil Right, a 400 page account of the history and scope of the telecommunications access movement by the deaf and hard of hearing community in America.