Executive Director, Laurie Hanin, shares perspective on the 20th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) at a July 26th press conference hosted by Lincoln Center and cosponsored by Art Education for the Blind and The Mayor's Office for People with Disability
Laurie Hanin, CHC Executive DirectorThe Center for Hearing and Communication (CHC) is pleased to be part of the 20th anniversary celebration of the ADA. For 100 years we’ve provided guidance and clinical services to infants, children, and adults with hearing loss – always with the goal of helping people with hearing loss connect to life. It’s a goal we proudly share with the ADA. Congratulations to Art Education for the Blind for working so hard to organize this wonderful event.
From 1910 when we were founded and until 1990 when the ADA was enacted, many employers, schools, and public facilities and organizations voluntarily made sure that they did not discriminate against people with hearing loss and other disabilities and that their programs were accessible. Certainly, CHC did. As far back as 1926, CHC, then known as the League for the Hard of Hearing, had a Theater Committee that convinced a new theater in NYC to install a group assistive listening device for some of its shows, a radical idea for then. However, without the ADA widespread accessibility and accommodations to those with disabilities would never have been achieved, and neither would there be any recourse for individuals when they were discriminated against.
Through the years, there have been dramatic changes in the technology available to assist people who have hearing loss, making it much easier for public venues to be accessible. Assistive listening devices and hearing aids utilize and take advantage of all of the advances in communications available to the general public: Bluetooth capability, wireless FM radio transmission, all in small easy to handle packaging. The simple and inexpensive placement of an induction loop (a wire placed around a room or other area such as ticket booths) can ensure that people with hearing aids and t-coils can hear to the best of their ability at every event. Computer assisted real-time captioning (court stenography) can ensure that every word spoken at public venues (lectures in museums, local and state government meetings, sporting events, etc.) is accessible to an individual with hearing loss. Captioning can be done remotely; the transcriber need not be in close proximity to the event. There are also now ways to provide access to sign language interpreters remotely. The real challenge, however, that still remains, even 20 years after the ADA has been enacted, is to make sure that the technology that exists and is needed by so many people is made available. While we have come a long way, this is not yet routinely the case.
The default accommodation at public venues in order to make them accessible to people with hearing loss is typically the provision of a sign language interpreter. However, among the 38 million Americans who have a hearing loss, only about 1-2 million are deaf and of these, estimates are that only about 500,000 use American Sign Language as their primary mode of communication. The vast majority of Americans with hearing loss communicate using spoken language and that is what they need access to.
The way to provide access to spoken language for people with hearing loss who do not use sign language is by the provision of assistive listening devices and the use of real-time captioning (either in person or remote). One of the principal considerations of the ADA is that the individual with a disability must have a choice of what accommodation they prefer unless an entity can show that their choice is equally effective and the consumer’s choice would fundamentally alter the activity or pose an undue financial or administrative burden. Assistive devices and CART is what this population prefers, and needs. Neither one alone is a substitute for the other; they are complementary and different individuals will prefer and need one or the other, or both, based on their hearing loss, their history, age, and many other factors. CART is rarely provided automatically at public venues; it is often not thought of initially and when asked for, it is often a struggle to have it provided.
At CHC, we look forward to another century of working together with other organizations to continue advancing the goals of the ADA and helping to make NYC the most accessible in the country.
Laurie Hanin
Executive Director
Center for Hearing and Communication
