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A New Civil Right
From the Journal of Deaf Studies and
Deaf Education
More than 300 years ago a physicist, Guillaume Amontons, stood on a hillside in
Meudon, France, and, using a series of windmills, sent a message to Belleville
and then to Paris. He received a response by similar signals, letters of the
alphabet attached to the windmill vanes, which were read with a telescope. This
experiment in “tele” (distance) communications, although successful, failed in
its attempt to acquire funding from his government. Ironically, Amontons was a
deaf man who proposed a system for long-distance communications access for the
hearing world.
A New Civil Right is a welcomed summary of the last half century’s
battles and breakthroughs by deaf and hearing people in the United States for
local, state, and federal legislation. Strauss, a telecommunications policy
advocate, was part of the revolution which changed our lives. She provides
firsthand details of the legislative movement toward telephone and television
(captioning) and the access. Shift of telephone companies and others from a
charitable or “social services” perspective to one that such access is a civil
right to which deaf and hard-of-hearing people are entitled.
Strauss covers the gamut of the legal movement toward access—from the initial
use of modems with teleprinters of the l960s to the current wireless world. As a
hearing person with many deaf friends and contacts, she personally experienced
the frustrations of using telecommunications access services—and these
experiences provided a motivating force for her own involvement in the battles
to implement laws. Chapters on the development and implementation of relay
services outline comprehensively one of the greatest triumphs for deaf people in
the United States. The chapter titled “In Case of Emergency” is particularly
moving. It describes personal experiences of deaf persons with medical
emergencies, the lack of visual emergency bulletins on television during
earthquakes and other severe weather events around the country, and the
involvement of deaf and hearing people in the battle to propel the Federal
Communications Commission into action.
Several chapters cover the history that led to closed captioning on television,
a welcomed documentation for scholars and general readers alike. There is also
coverage of hearing aid-compatible telephone technology. “A Wireless World”
details how digital wireless technologies required still another battle to
assure access. Universal Design as it relates to telecommunications is also
examined in depth. The book leads the reader up to current developments in
videotelephony and the Internet—and the next battle to be fought. Throughout the
book, compelling human interest stories are woven into the discussions of the
bouts with the government windmills.
The book’s one shortcoming is the bibliography, which is unusually sparse. The
history is easy to read, although somewhat burdened unavoidably with acronyms
and abbreviations, but an appendix provides easy reference to them. Photographs,
timelines, and footnotes enrich the reading further.
In her Introduction, Strauss summarizes that the book is also a “tribute to all
of the tireless advocates who achieved these victories against all odds.” This
review pays tribute to Strauss as a pioneer who had her own dream for civil
rights and helped lead us all on the march to federal laws.
Karen Peltz Strauss is a leading telecommunications policy advocate in
Washington, DC.
ISBN 1-56368-291-5, 978-1-56368-291-9, 7 x 10 casebound, 304 pages, tables, references, index
$75.00s
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