WASHINGTON-While the mobile-phone industry insists steady progress has been made in the five years since the Federal Communications Commission was asked-but held back-from mandating hearing-aid compatibility for mobile phones, the hearing-impaired community is now unwilling to accept anything less than government intervention.
The Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association said because such progress is being made, it would be premature for the FCC to re-examine the issue.
Hearing-impaired people and organizations are having none of it.
“The only progress has been in the wireless industry profits overall, not in the avenues of their products and services being `accessible to and usable by’ people with disabilities … and certainly not in communicating to the consumers what is available, what benefits whom, or even where to try out or even find out information about what little does exist,” said Jo Waldron, a hearing disabled activist who has developed technical solutions to interference caused by digital phones to hearing aids.
The FCC was recently asked by the Wireless Access Coalition to reopen a regulatory proceeding prompted by 1995 petition seeking to revoke an exemption for mobile phones under the Hearing Aid Compatibility Act of 1988. The 1996 telecom act also requires disability access to telecommunications services if it is readily achievable.
Then-FCC Chairman Reed Hundt threatened to take action if the wireless industry and hearing-impaired representatives failed to make progress working together. The two groups struck a deal to do just that in 1996, but the hearing-impaired community now claims the industry did not live up to its end of the bargain.
“Despite such assurances by the industry … five years after the summit, there have been no changes to digital wireless phones to make them accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing Americans,” the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing told the FCC. Six million American use hearing aids.
Shortly before stepping down, former FCC Chairman William Kennard said it was time to consider mandating hearing-aid compatibility for mobile phones.
The issue has been left for new FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who to date has shown sensitivity to telecom access for disabled citizens.
