A Phone of Our Own: The Deaf Insurrection Against Ma Bell

11. Bridges

111 ~ BRIDGES On May 13, 1975, Weitbrecht was delighted to participate in the first authorized transatlantic TTY call using the modem he had developed . Finally, nearly two decades after the first transatlantic telephone cable was laid and more than a decade after the Phonetype for deaf people was developed, the FCC had granted AT&T temporary authority to provide the use of its facilities for a "one-day demonstration of Phonetype." At 12:30 P.M. (7:30 A.M. in Washington, D.C.), Britain and America at last were linked in an authorized TTY call across the Atlantic. Andrea Saks brought this about. The FCC told her that ifshe were able to get all of the common carriers to agree, they would grant her a one-day-only waiver while new telecommunication regulations were before the FCC for consideration. The U.S. Department of Commerce Telecommunications Equipment and Systems Exhibition at the United States Trade Center in London was planned for May. More than sixty U.S. firms would be presenting their latest state-of-the-art technology to the British market, and the FCC believed that the demonstration call between deaf people would be good publicity. Saks cleverly figured out how to get all the telecommunications carriers to agree. She used her college training in acting to promote her cause. Saks direct dialed each common carrier representative and pretended to be a long distance operator calling from London. Once she completed the connection, she changed roles and made personal appointments with the carrier representatives because she knew that she would not be convincing over the telephone. With AT&T, the FCC, and the Post 154 BRIDGES I 155 Andrea J. Saks played a significant role in gaining permission for the first transatlantic TTY call in May 1975. On the day of the call, she held a press conference at the U.S. Trade Center Building in London. She has spent most of her adult life in pursuit of equity and compatibility in international telecommunications. Courtesy of P.Le. PHOTOS LIMITED. Office in England all supportive of her efforts, she was able to convince the carrier representatives to see her. Saks then flew to New York City to meet with each carrier. In this way, she personally succeeded in getting all of the approvals for the demonstration TTY call. The venue for the call came together very fast after the New York City meetings. The demonstration call was highly publicized. During the first TTY conversation, Weitbrecht typed to Jack Ashley, a deaf Member of Parliament : THIS IS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CALLING GREAT BRITAIN. Ashley responded, GOOD AFTERNOON. THIS IS LONDON SENDING WARMEST GREETINGS TO OUR FRIENDS IN THE UNITED 156 I BRIDGES STATES •••• CONGRATULATIONS ON THIS SYMBOL OF PROGRESS FOR DEAF PEOPLE WHICH HAS GIVEN VAST ENCOURAGEMENT TO EVERYONE HERE. 1 Ashley also told the press that "the people who have made this call possible to the United States deserve a vote of thanks from the deaf people throughout the world. It is a monumental achievement. What it's doing is pushing forward a frontier, and any person or organization who can accomplish that has every reason to be proud."2 Ironically, these years saw Weitbrecht, the principal developer of the TTY modem and Ashley's partner in this historic conversation, falling by the wayside in the telecommunications revolution. By mid-1975, the number ofTTYs in the United States had reached about 10,000. With this growth, the political momentum in the deaf community increased. President Ford's signing of Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, ensured access to free, appropriate public education and assisted states and localities with funding to deliver effective educational programming. The law also reflected general increased acceptance of diversity in American society. In 1975 the National Center for Law and the Deaf was established at Gallaudet College to help eliminate barriers for deaf people in education, employment, health care, legal services, and government programs. The staff members were experts in legal issues related to disability rights and trained in sign language. One of their first actions was to encourage AT&T officials to form a high-level management committee to review the needs of people with disabilities. Public activism was breaking out everywhere, and protests and legislative enactments brought more visible access on a much broader scale than ever before. In South Dakota, for example, Benjamin Soukup, a deaf man, pushed...