(As prepared for delivery)

**Telecommunications Access: A Challenge to Succeed**

Remarks by

Dale N. Hatfield

Chief, Office of Engineering and Technology

Federal Communications Commission

at

The Association of Access Engineering Specialists

**Disability Access**

Technical Development Workshop

Long Beach, CA

June 30, 1999

Thank you for the very kind introduction. I am very pleased to be here
in Long Beach to attend this AAES Disability Access Technical
Development Workshop. I am pleased for a host of reasons. First, it
enabled me to attend the RESNA Awards Ceremony last evening and to
convey Chairman\'s Kennard\'s personal greeting regarding your annual
meeting and this workshop on access engineering. Second, it allows me to
express my own support for the goals of the AAES and, at the same time,
learn more about the techniques, successes and challenges facing your
critical discipline.

At the awards ceremony last evening, I quoted from Chairman Kennard\'s
letter so I won\'t do that in detail here again here today. But I do
want to note that, in his greeting, the Chairman spoke of his commitment
to seeing that all people receive the benefits of the wonderful
technological revolution that is occurring in the telecommunications
field. Quite frankly, this commitment to inclusiveness \-- and the
commitment of the other Commissioners \-- played a major role in my
decision to postpone my own retirement and to return to government
service.

The general notion of universal service, of course, has a long history
in telecommunications. But in the early days of the industry, the focus
was on extending the geographic reach of telegraph and then telephone
services as exemplified by the universal service language in the
Communications Act of 1934. Prior to the passage of the
Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Commission \-- working with State
regulators \-- had taken other steps to encourage universal service. It
developed its Life-Line and Link-Up-America plans to help bring persons
with low income onto the network and it developed economic support
mechanisms for carriers providing services in high cost areas. At the
same time, the Department of Agriculture, through the Rural
Electrification Administration (REA \-- now the Rural Utilities Service,
RUS), was encouraging wider telephone network deployment through its
various subsidy programs.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 reinforced the importance of
universal service and provided for various means of extending
telecommunications services to insular and high cost areas and to making
sure that schools, libraries, and rural healthcare facilities can gain
access to advanced telecommunications services. Most relevant to this
gathering is the fact that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 explicitly
addressed the issue of accessibility to telecommunications services and
equipment by persons with disabilities. It recognized that you don\'t
have to be poor or live in an insular or high cost area to be isolated,
cutoff or segregated from enjoying the full benefits of the
telecommunications revolution.

More specifically, Section 255 of the Communications Act, along with
Section 251(a)(2), now make it a matter of national policy that
manufacturers of telecommunications equipment and providers of
telecommunications services ensure that such equipment and services are
accessible to and usable by persons with disabilities, if readily
achievable. To carry out the purposes of the \'96 Act, the Congress
assigned certain responsibilities to the United States Architectural and
Transportation Barriers Board \-- the Access Board \-- and to my agency,
the Federal Communications Commission. Importantly, and I will return to
this in more detail in a moment, the Congress assigned to the FCC the
role of enforcement.

To implement its obligations under the \'96 Act, the Access Board
convened a Telecommunications Access Advisory Committee (TAAC) to
develop recommended equipment accessibility guidelines for consideration
by the Access Board. Thereafter, the Access Board adopted the
Telecommunications Act Accessibility Guidelines for equipment, drawing
heavily upon the TAAC report recommendations. The TAAC played another
important role \-- I understand that much of the impetus and underlying
philosophy of AAES was developed during the TAAC process in the
sub-committee on compliance.

In April 1998, the Commission adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
(NPRM) dealing with its implementation of Sections 255 and 251(a)(2) of
the Act. Over two hundred individuals, organizations, and businesses
filed comments, reply comments, or both in response to the NPRM. As many
of you probably know by now, the Commission is expected to issue a
Report and Order in just two weeks time \-- at its open meeting on July
14^th^.

Because the Commission is at a critical point in its decision making
process, I am limited in my ability to discuss or characterize its
decision. However, I would like to take a few minutes to express our
expectations or vision on how things should work under Section 255. I
should add \-- indeed, I should have said at the outset \-- that the
views I express here today are my own, and they do not necessarily
reflect the views of any individual Commissioner, the Commission, or any
other Commission staff person. In talking about our vision, I would like
to address two areas: (1) the nature and implications of the
technological revolution that is taking place around us and (2) the
absolutely critical role that access engineering can \-- indeed must \--
play in ensuring that the benefits of that revolution flow to all of our
people, including those with disabilities.

**Nature and Implications of the Technological Revolution**

Many of you are engineers and you understand the fundamental shifts that
are taking place in our telecommunications networks. These shifts
include the migration from circuit switching to packet switching and
true bandwidth on demand, the movement toward increasingly intelligent,
programmable wireline and wireless networks, the development of
increasingly intelligent and powerful end user equipment, the increased
ability to deliver broadband services, and the increasing importance of
wireless as a means of accessing these networks. While I won\'t take the
time to discuss these developments in detail, they add up to a
revolution that promises to allow us to communicate anytime, anyplace,
and in any mode or combination of modes \-- voice, data, image, and
video. Because these developments add up to major changes in the way we
communicate, the way we entertain ourselves, the way we do business, the
way we learn, and the way we are employed, their importance can hardly
be over-estimated.

As Chairman Kennard said in a speech late last year, \"properly
harnessed, these networks and devices create a potent platform upon
which to serve the needs of all of our citizens, including those with
disabilities.\" They create new and expanded opportunities for
accessibility and inclusiveness. They do so because these rapidly
evolving networks and devices have microprocessors and software at their
core. Unlike buildings made of steel and concrete, this technology has
programming at its core \-- programming that controls the features and
functions available. In a practical sense, this means that when
engineers think in broad terms about the range of human characteristics
that may interact with the networks and devices they are designing, they
can program in the capabilities to have alternative, flexible interfaces
for input and output. Modes of input can include tactile controls or
voice. Modes of output can include graphical images, textual prose,
speech synthesis, or Braille displays. And, of course, the expanding
availability of wireless access means that the designer can deliver
those capabilities directly to the end user \-- wherever they might be
\-- rather than imposing on the end user the need to come to the
network.

Thus, as I indicated a moment ago, we envision a software-driven network
\-- a network of networks really \-- that allows us to communicate
anytime, anyplace, and in any mode or combination of modes. The
potential is there for us to use this increased functionality and
flexibility to bring the benefits of the telecommunications revolution
to all Americans, including those who have traditionally faced
accessibility barriers to telecommunications products and services. Of
course, we face challenges in realizing that potential.

As I see it, one of the major challenges we face is the sheer speed at
which these developments are occurring. In the days of electromechanical
switching and electromechanical end user devices, the pace of
development was relatively slow. In the case of the telephone network,
there were steady improvements in the interior of the network, but the
basic characteristics of the service remained remarkably stable over the
100 years or so it took to proliferate. This allowed time for experts in
assistive technology to work in relative isolation and to develop access
devices such as TTYs for persons who are deaf. Now, of course, the pace
of change is much faster. Product cycles for devices like cellular
phones and Personal Data Assistants are measured in months, not years.
Because of the increasing use of open platforms or open architectures
\-- as exemplified by the Internet \-- it is quite literally possible
for individual entrepreneurs and inventors to develop software that can
be used to create new services. Indeed the Worldwide Web and Internet
voice developed in much this way. Because the software itself can be
distributed over the Internet and because the service is created as an
application running on equipment \-- PCs \-- at the edge of the network
outside the control of the carrier or other provider, the pace of change
can be mind boggling. We truly are working on \"Internet time.\"

What this means, it seems to me, is that access must be planned and
implemented on the same schedule as general products. That is, these
powerful new platforms must be designed, developed and fabricated at the
*outset* to be accessible to \-- and usable by \-- individuals with
disabilities. To do otherwise means that people with disabilities will
become more isolated rather than empowered by these advances. It will
mean that they will be forced backward rather than propelled forward by
the potential of this technological revolution. The importance \-- nay,
the imperative \-- of designing accessibility into telecommunications
products and services leads to the second area I would like to address.

**The Critical Role of Access Engineering and of the AAES**

As I mentioned before, it is my understanding that your organization
emerged from the work of the TAAC which recognized the need for a
continuing resource for the industry on accessibility issues, especially
in relation to addressing the requirements of Section 255 of the \'96
Act. It is my further understanding that one of the key purposes of the
AAES is to develop and nurture the field of access engineering. At the
Commission, we see the development of access engineering as being
important for two critical reasons.

*First*, as I just stated, we no longer have the luxury of considering
accessibility issues after the product is designed, fabricated, and
deployed. To use the slang terminology, it must be designed in at the
\"git-go.\" Viewed in this light, access engineering, relatively
speaking, is still in its infancy. Like other disciplines in their
infancy, professionals in the field must develop good engineering
practices, find the means for exchanging information on best practices,
find ways of informing themselves and their colleagues about
developments in technology, regulations, public policy, business
practices and resources useful in addressing access concerns \-- all
while mastering the \"nuts and bolts\" of the discipline. This is
important, obviously, because the discipline provides the techniques by
which accessibility will be taken into account at the design stage of
product development. I do not think it is an overstatement to say that
the ultimate success of policies towards access expressed by the
Congress in the \'96 Act depend upon how well you and your colleagues in
related fields develop this relatively new discipline.

There is some good news to go along with this effort. I believe it is
being increasingly recognized that, in addition to benefiting persons
with disabilities, accessibility holds the potential of benefiting
everyone. Just as many non-disabled persons have benefited from the
universal design principles captured in the ADA and the Architectural
Barriers Act, many non-disabled persons will benefit from accessible
equipment and services. Early this year, I had the privilege of
attending a week-long course on access engineering organized by Dr.
Gregg Vanderheiden at the TRACE center at the University of Wisconsin.
While I was generally aware of the notion that improving accessibility
for persons with disabilities benefits us all, attendance at that course
really drove home the point to me in terms of telecommunications and
information products and services. I came away convinced that good
access engineering is simply good engineering that can lead to better
products and services for us all.

Parenthetically, I might add that I was interested to see an article
relating to the universal design movement on the front page of the
\"Week in Review\" section of last Sunday\'s New York Times. The
article, in case you did not see it, focused on the aging of the
baby-boom generation and how industries from automobile manufacturers to
soft drink bottlers are developing a new generation of easier-to-use
products for that population. It noted that even marketers love the
notion of products being designed to be accessible to the widest
possible range of people by taking all of their limitations and
disabilities into account.

The wider acceptance of universal design principles does not mean that
we can be complacent about ensuring accessibility to telecommunications
services and equipment by persons with disabilities. But it does point
to the prospect for increased acceptance of the importance of access to
the competitive success of equipment and services in the market for
telecommunications products and services more broadly.

The second reason that access engineering is so important is because of
its key role in testing whether the principles and purposes of universal
design can succeed without heavy and intrusive regulatory involvement.
In surveys about the success of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the
great majority of people, including corporate leaders, believe that it
has had a positive effect on society by broadening the places that
individuals and families can go, separately and together, by
strengthening economic opportunities for all citizens, and by improving
the bonds of community.

Section 255 will follow a similar course if it is perceived, as it
should be, as generally opening communications opportunities without
impeding the telecommunications revolution that has become such an
exciting and important part of contemporary life. That is why access
engineering is so important. On the one hand, by simply facilitating the
development of accessible products and services, it will mean that we
will be faced with fewer and less intrusive enforcement actions. On the
other hand, some complaints about accessibility are inevitable. Indeed,
complaints are a just and appropriate part of resolving problems and
achieving the purposes of the law. They are necessary not only to
protect consumers with disabilities, they are also necessary to protect
ethical, law-abiding organizations from unfair competition from
providers who do not fully embrace the principles set forth in Sections
255 and 251(a)(2) of the Act. Access engineering can help here as well
because, when complaints are received, we will be in a better position
to evaluate whether a provider of equipment or services is in compliance
with our rules. We will be in a better position because, as the field of
access engineering evolves, I would expect more clearly defined
consensus practices to develop. Those practices, in turn, will enable us
to more objectively judge whether or not it is readily achievable to
make a particular product or service accessible. These consensus
practices should also offer equipment and service providers a much
better gauge of pre-market assurance of compliance.

Overall, the cost of complying with the Act and the cost of enforcement
should be perceived as modest ones that clearly are justified by the
benefits that result. This is the reason the objectives and work of your
organization \-- AAES \-- are so important. Not only are you promoting
access engineering with all of the benefits I have described, you are
also facilitating voluntary compliance. You are promoting voluntary
compliance by providing engineers and consumer representatives the
opportunity to get together and to develop solutions in a relaxed
environment without the pressures, distance, and defensiveness created
by formal enforcement proceedings, lawyers, and budget reviews.

**Summary and Conclusions**

Let me conclude by saying that the Commission \-- starting with the
Chairman \-- is committed to seeing that the Section 255 is implemented
and enforced in such a manner that its original intentions are achieved.
Clearly accessibility is the goal. But as I have tried to express here
today, organizations such as the AAES have a vital role in ensuring that
those goals are met. As telecommunications technology is designed,
fabricated and deployed, accessibility must be an integral part of the
process. In that way, as Chairman Kennard once said, people with
disabilities will be included rather than isolated and empowered rather
than marginalized.

Thank you.