Towards Accessible Telecommunications for People with Disabilities

When the Tide Comes In: Towards Accessible Telecommunications for People with Disabilities in Australia

A discussion paper commissioned by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission

William Jolley, Chief Consultant

Jolley William & Associates

wjolley@bigpond.com

June 2003

Discussion in Brief

Background and Purpose

Disability Statistics

DDA Telecommunications Complaints

Technology and Service Access

Fixed Line Telephony

Cellular Mobile Telephony

Internet Connectivity

Next Generation Networks

Policy and Regulation

Telecommunications Act 1997

TCPSS Act 1999

Disability Discrimination Act

Consumer Representation and Consultation

Major Issues for People with disabilities

Disability Equipment Programs

Any-to-any Text Connectivity

Telecommunications Disability Standard

Mobile Phones

Videocommunication

Payphones

Overseas Developments

Conclusion

Back to contents page

Background and Purpose

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) has commissioned a discussion paper to identify barriers faced by people with disabilities in their use of telecommunications services and equipment, and to recommend strategies that will improve their access and reduce discrimination. The Paper begins with a discussion of telecommunications technology and the regulatory framework, and then considers specific access barriers faced by people with disabilities. It is a discussion paper that includes recommendations intended to focus discussion and give some guidance on strategies for improving telecommunications accessibility for people with disabilities in Australia. This is a summary of the paper which provides contextual background and discusses the major issues.

The digital and computer revolution is fuelling growth and convergence in telecommunications, broadcasting and publishing. The implications are profound for education, employment and leisure activities, as well as for business transactions and social interaction. One phenomenon of this convergence is the much greater variety of traffic carried over the telecommunications network. For many years it mainly carried voice traffic, but now the network carries a mixture of traffics representing voice, image, video and text communication.

The Australian telecommunications industry is modern and competitive. Its products and services are woven into the fabric of Australian society, and therefore equitable telecommunications access should be regarded as a fundamental human right for all Australians. The Universal Service Regime confirms this right. The definition of 'standard telephone service' recognises text connectivity as an appropriate substitute to voice communication for people who are deaf and people with speech/hearing disabilities who require it. Universal access is envisaged for all Australians, wherever they reside or carry on business, to the standard telephone service and to payphones. The network is modern and efficient, and customers have a variety of means for telecommunications: fixed telephones, terrestrial or satellite wireless phones, and access to the Internet. A strong feature of the telecommunications system in Australia is universal geographic accessibility. However, the situations for people on low incomes facing barriers of affordability, and for people with disabilities facing barriers of both accessibility and affordability, are not so positive.

Many people with disabilities in Australia cannot exercise their fundamental human right of Telecommunication on the same basis as the rest of society. Although there are more mobile phones than fixed line phones, and the number continues to grow, the text telephones used in Australia still do not work with mobile phones. Furthermore, they do not work from many switchboard extensions, denying Deaf people and people with hearing/speech impairments access to telecommunications in a wide range of commercial environments. Many people with hearing impairments cannot use standard telephones because they do not have a volume control, and they cannot use most mobile phones because they interfere with their hearing aids. Older people with low vision, and people with limited manual dexterity experience difficulty in using mobile phones with small keypads and regular phones where the keys are not clearly separated or displayed. Blind people cannot use SMS, nor most of the standard features on mobile phones.

Without inclusive design embedded in the product development cycle, people with disabilities must engage in a never-ending process of 'catch up'. As assistive technology is released that provides access, the relentless march of new technology soon means that a new inaccessible product is released; and the cycle of access denied, adaptation and retrofitting begins again.

HREOC has recognised that people with disabilities continue to face access barriers for telecommunications, and that with new technologies and services a new set of challenges and opportunities will arise. Accordingly HREOC has commissioned the discussion paper which makes twenty-six recommendations towards more accessible telecommunications for people with disabilities. Its first recommendation is for HREOC to convene a high-level accessible telecommunications forum comprising stakeholders representing the telecommunications industry, the Commonwealth Government and consumers with disabilities. The Forum's first task might be to examine the recommendations and, if considered appropriate to do so, develop strategies for their implementation.

Disability Statistics

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS (1998)) has estimated that 19% of the Australian population has some kind of disability. Estimates of the incidence of disability in Australia are comparable with other developed countries, but paradoxically they are double the World Health Organisation estimate of 10% for the prevalence of disability worldwide. People with a variety of physical, sensory and intellectual disabilities experience difficulty in using traditional telephone services, and in many cases their problems are perpetuated or exacerbated with access to new products and services such as mobile telephones and Internet connectivity.

The ABS figures do not give much insight into difficulties experienced by people with disabilities in using telecommunications services and products. Phoneability (1999) gives a nice breakdown of disability types in relation to phone usage, whilst having regard to the classical diagnostic categories. The figures are based on a population of 385 million persons in the European Union, from which we can derive estimates for Australia's population of 19 million. The categories of disability used in the table are similar to those commonly used in Australia. The term 'cognitive impairment' corresponds with 'intellectual disability'.

Disability type	Estimates for European Union	Estimates for Australia
Hearing impairment (moderate)	16 million	800 thousand
Hearing impairment (severe)	4 million	200 thousand
Deaf	2 million	100 thousand
Vision impairment (moderate)	3 million	150 thousand
Vision impairment (severe)	2 million	100 thousand
Blind	1 million	50 thousand
Deafblind	0.2 million	10 thousand
Speech impairment (moderate)	3 million	150 thousand
Speech impairment (severe)	2 million	100 thousand
Limited dexterity	7 million	350 thousand
Limited use of hands/arms	5 million	250 thousand
Weak grip	7 million	350 thousand
Hand tremor	7 million	350 thousand
Cognitive impairment	9 million	450 thousand
Restricted mobility (lower limb)	22 million	1.1 million

Table I

Phone-related handicap in Australia

DDA Telecommunications Complaints

The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA) prohibits discrimination in the provision of goods, services and facilities against people with disabilities and their associates. This includes telecommunications. In the lead up to the Act being passed, and for the ten years since that time, telecommunications have figured prominently in systemic advocacy by organisations of people with disabilities. There have also been some telecommunications-related DDA complaints, the most significant of which was undoubtedly Scott v. Telstra. This complaint, made in 1993, was a watershed: putting the DDA on the map, giving basic real-time telecommunication to people who are deaf, and awakening industry to the reality that disability discrimination had become unlawful in Australia.

Geoffrey Scott, who is deaf, complained that Telstra did not provide him with a TTY on the same conditions as it provided telephone hand sets to other domestic subscribers. The complaint was upheld, and discrimination was deemed to have occurred against Mr Scott and against all other telephone subscribers who required text telephony as an alternative to voice telephony. This was a landmark judgment which can be downloaded from http://www.humanrights.gov.au/disability_rights/decisions/comdec/1995/D…. In a related decision on remedies, Commissioner Wilson specified that Telstra supply to persons who are profoundly deaf (and not eligible for a TTY under the Government's then Disability Strategy Policy) a $600 TTY voucher, renewable after five years. The decision may be downloaded from http://www.humanrights.gov.au/disability_rights/decisions/comdec/1995/D….

The provision of TTY vouchers has evolved into the Disability Equipment Programs of Telstra and Optus as we know them today. The Scott case was also important in that it led to text connectivity when required by persons with disabilities being included in the specification of the Standard Telephone Service.

HREOC (2003) describes some typical telecommunications-related complaints.

Mobile phone and hearing aids: Interference was caused for hearing aid users by GSM telephones. HREOC investigated these complaints via public inquiry which led to each of the mobile carrier services adopting schemes to improve access and consumer information.
Mobile phone for disability pensioners: A Disability Support Pension (DSP) Recipient complained that he could not enter into a mobile phone contract. The company confirmed that DSP recipients were among the categories of potential consumers because they were considered high-risk for payment default. Following conciliation, the complainant received service.
Fee waiver for easy call facility: A man with cerebral palsy complained because he was charged a fee for easy-dial facilities, a necessity for him that was optional for others. The complaint was settled when the company agreed to waiver the fee for the complainant and other people who needed the facility to use the phone.
Accessible bills: A woman who is blind complained that her mobile phone bill was not provided in an accessible format. The complaint was settled with an agreement for the provision of bills in Braille.
Physical access to payphones: A wheelchair user complained that new payphones were too high for him to use. The complaint was settled with an assurance from Telstra that payphones would be modified with a bracket to lower the height of payphones, and that an Action Plan would be developed to address payphone accessibility.

Quite recently some specific concerns have been brought to HREOC's attention concerning SMS and mobile phones. SMS has been revolutionary for Deaf people, but it is expensive with heavy use and is unregulated. Blind people have expressed concern that they cannot use SMS, and they cannot use most of the standard menu and onscreen display features of mobile phones.

Technology and Service Access

From its beginning until the mid 1980s, the Australian telecommunications network was characterised as a government owned monopoly providing basic access and voice telephony services to a steadily growing proportion of the population. But recently there has been a shift at every level of Australian telecommunications. The underlying network technology was transformed with the shift from analogue to digital, from mechanics to electronics and increasingly to optics. This has provided the technical capacity for the network to meet the requirements of new services, and a huge increase in consumer and business demand. These changes were facilitated by the transition from a monopolistic to a competitive industry structure, and a regulatory environment which has encouraged competition, facilitated capital injection and ensured consumer protection.

The Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) was originally designed for basic telephony. Since 1990 it has been extensively upgraded into an intelligent and seamless network carrying a variety of products and types of communications traffic, which enter the network via different access pathways. These include basic fixed telephony, mobile services and data services. Mobile and data services are not separate networks, but simply different access technologies for the core inter-exchange network. For residential consumers and small business, the predominant data service is access to the Internet, whereas industrial data services include financial transactions (ATM and EFTPOS), computer network traffic, and broadcasting.

Broadly speaking, there are three main telecommunications paradigms:

Fixed line telephony, with access via the copper-based, analogue Customer Access Network;
Mobile telephony, with access via terrestrial or satellite radiocommunication; and
Internet connectivity, with access via dialup modems or broadband digital links.

Fixed Line Telephony

Development of the Australian PSTN was based on analogue transmission along copper wires. The PSTN has been progressively digitised over the last two decades, except that analogue transmission is still used in the customer access network, and may continue to be for many years to come. The Inter-Exchange Network is made from optical fibre high capacity links composed of 64kbit/s channels. It is known as the Integrated Digital Network. Next generation networks will complete the integration of voice and data networks on a common high-speed digital platform.

Most business customers connect to the network via multiple lines. The interface between the incoming lines and the telephone handsets is a switchboard. Increasingly these days, the switchboard is also an analogue-digital interface. That is, communication with the network is analogue, whereas communication with the handsets is digital. These systems, with digital signaling to the handsets, use a wide variety of proprietary standards.

Cellular Mobile Telephony

Cellular mobile telephony was the first frontier of competition in Australia's telecommunications marketplace, with three GSM digital service providers licensed following the passing of the Telecommunications Act 1991. Digital cellular telephony was introduced around 1993. By June 2002 there were 12.67 million mobile telephone subscribers, a 13% increase from the previous year. There were 11.7 million GSM and 900 thousand CDMA subscribers.

Telecommunications practitioners refer to three generations of cellular mobile communications.

First generation systems were analogue. The AMPS system was developed in the United States and was used in some other countries including Australia.
The second generation technologies include GSM and CDMA.
Third generation technologies are the future, but when they will be fully deployed and widely used, and what services they will support, is still a matter of conjecture.

The 2G standards currently used in Australia are GSM and CDMA. They both support: voice telephony, slow-speed data communication, and SMS (Short Messaging Service). SMS has grown in popularity, spreading from the original take-up by young people to become popular across most significant market segments. Messages of up to 160 characters can be exchanged for the cost equivalent to a local call. Currently 300 million SMS messages are sent each month in Australia, approaching almost one message per cell phone subscriber per day, and generating around one billion dollars of revenue annually. SMS uses excess capacity on the signalling channels of the GSM and CDMA networks. SMS is not a formal telecommunications service. It is not regulated and there are no service guarantees. SMS is a store and forward system, not a near-real-time text connectivity service. The sender has no confirmation that a message is received, and has no control over the transmission time.

The transition from the second to the third generation of mobile communication technologies will be gradual as new networks are opened up, new data-rate capacity is realised by content providers and consumers, new content services are developed, new terminals are released, and consumer interest increases. In 2003 we have seen the deployment of 3G networks in the centres of large cities, with the promotion of services targeted to business customers and to young people playing games and sharing music/image files.

Internet Connectivity

The Internet is a loose collection of computer networks. It has its origins in the 1970s as connectivity was established within the military, academic and scientific research communities, initially in the United States. The Internet did not start to spread beyond this professional community until development of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, after which it has rapidly gained popularity in schools, homes and businesses worldwide. Recent Internet growth has been phenomenal, from 38 million customers in January 1994 to 580 million in May 2002.

The World Wide Web is a huge conglomerate of databases and information repositories, commonly referred to as websites and web pages. It is the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that enables a client to move around in cyberspace from one Web page to another by following links. The links are simply document references embedded into text files in accordance with certain addressing and file naming protocols. When a user is viewing a file and clicks on a link, a new file is retrieved for viewing or saving on the user's computer. In this way the user 'surfs' from file to file, from one virtual location to the next, around the Web of online databases.

Until recently residential and small business customers have used dialup access to the Internet. The user's computer terminal is connected with the Internet Service Provider's host computer over the telephone network, using a pair of modems. Over the past twenty years modem speeds have increased from 300bit/s to 56kbit/s. Modem speeds have now plateaued, and it seems that 56kbit/s is the upper limit for data transfer over the analogue telephone network. Over the past five years residential and small business subscribers have acquired broadband Internet connectivity. This is an always-on form of connection and gives much higher data rates by comparison with dialup connection.

Next Generation Networks

Telecommunications technology trends are clear: digital network interior; fixed line and mobile wireless customer access changing from analogue to digital; and mixed voice, data and video traffic. This gives rise to the so-called next generation networks (NGN), but the precise look and feel of NGN is not clear. The telecommunications network based on 64kbit/s circuit-switched channels has provided good service for predominantly voice-based traffic; but to accommodate the rapidly growing volume of data, Internet and video traffic change is needed. The drivers for change include: flexibility, open interfaces and economics. Future networks will have to support the current services of voice telephony, data communications and Internet access, as well as new services such as real-time multimedia communication which is not widely supported today.

The NGN evolution is gradual. Networks will develop from the current networks built by telecommunications companies. There will not be just one network of the future. There will be heterogeneous network components with different architectures offering different services. From the users' point of view there will be a convergence of terminals. In the analogue world the telephone, camera, television and other devices have been separate. In the digital world we can already see the development of flexible multimedia terminals: the pocket computer with digital camera and mobile phone, the printer that doubles as photocopier, etc. If the development of these new multimedia terminals is based on inclusive design principles, people with disabilities stand to benefit along with the rest of the community.

Policy and Regulation

The telecommunications Act 1997 regulates the telecommunications industry (carriers and carriage service providers), and the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999 (TCPSS) aims to promote the interests of consumers and achieve equitable service access across Australia. The Australian Communications Authority (ACA) administers telecommunications legislation and regulations; the Australian Communications Industry Forum (ACIF) is the industry owned and managed self-regulation body, which develops industry codes and standards; and the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) resolves complaints from residential and small business telecommunications consumers. Telstra is Australia's Universal Service Provider, and is judged to have made substantial efforts to make services and equipment accessible to people with disabilities; but this outreach has largely been confined to the fixed line telephony and payphones, despite the huge growth and social importance of both mobile telephony and the Internet.

Telecommunications Act 1997

The Telecommunications Act 1997 sets up a system for regulating telecommunications in Australia in a competitive environment. It should be read in conjunction with the TCPSS Act 1999. The Telecommunications Act regulates Carriers and Service Providers.

The ACA is to monitor, and report each year to the Minister on, significant matters relating to the performance of carriers and carriage service providers, with particular attention to: consumer satisfaction, consumer benefits and quality of service.
Organisations which represent sections of the industry may develop industry codes, which they may register with the ACA. Compliance with such codes is voluntary, unless compliance is directed by the ACA. The ACA retains a reserve power to make standards, where codes are deficient or do not exist, and compliance with standards is mandatory.
Provision is made for the technical regulation of customer equipment, customer cabling and cabling work.

Part 21 of the Act specifies a regime for technical regulation. The ACA may make the following types of standards:

(a) technical standards about customer equipment and customer cabling (S.376);

(b) standards relating to the features of customer equipment that are designed to cater for the special needs of persons with disabilities (s.380); and

(c) technical standards about the interconnection of facilities (S.384),

and the ACA may require customer equipment and customer cabling to be labelled so as to indicate compliance with standards (S.407).

Section 380 of the Act allows the ACA to make a standard relating to specified customer equipment if:

(a) the customer equipment is for use in connection with the standard telephone service; and

(b) the customer equipment is for use primarily by persons who do not have a disability; and

(c) the standard relates to the features of the equipment that are designed to cater for any or all of the special needs of persons with disabilities.

Section 380 gives two examples of disability access features:

(a) an induction loop that is designed to assist in the operation of a hearing aid;

(b) a raised dot on the button labelled "5" on a telephone.

Section 383 specifies that in determining whether a person has infringed section 24 of the DDA in relation to the supply or provision of customer equipment, it must be taken into account as to whether the customer equipment complies with a standard in force under section 380, but other matters can be taken into account as well. Apart from this reference to the DDA, there is no reference to compliance with disability access standards under the Telecommunications Act. In particular, the Section 407 compliance mechanism does not apply to standards for access by people with disabilities made under Section 380.

TCPSS Act 1999

The TCPSS Act 1999 harmonises the previous consumer-related provisions of the Telecommunications Act 1997 and the Trade Practices Act 1974. It is an important starting point for consumer protection and service guarantees for all telecommunications customers, including people with disabilities. The Act establishes a Universal Service Regime which seeks to ensure that all people in Australia, wherever they reside or carry on business, should have reasonable access, on an equitable basis, to: standard telephone services, payphones, prescribed carriage services and digital data services.

Section 6 of the Act defines a standard telephone service as:

… a carriage service for each of the following purposes:

(a) the purpose of voice telephony;

(b) if:

(i) voice telephony is not practical for a particular end user with a disability (for example, because the user has a hearing impairment); and

(ii) another form of communication that is equivalent to voice telephony (for example, communication by means of a teletypewriter) would be required to be supplied to the end user in order to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act 1992;

the purpose of that form of communication;

(c) a purpose declared by the regulations to be a designated purpose for the purposes of that provision;

…

Telstra is the current default Universal Service Provider. Telstra, by contract with the Commonwealth Government, provides services to meet the universal service and digital data obligations specified in the universal service regime.

Section 9 of the Act defines the universal service obligation as the obligation:

(a) to ensure that standard telephone services are reasonably accessible to all people in Australia on an equitable basis, wherever they reside or carry on business - and includes the supply of such services on request; and

(b) to ensure that payphones are reasonably accessible to all people in Australia on an equitable basis, wherever they reside or carry on business and includes the supply, installation and maintenance of payphones; and

(c) to ensure that prescribed carriage services are reasonably accessible to all people in Australia on an equitable basis, wherever they reside or carry on business - and includes the supply of such services on request.

Section 10 of the Act defines the digital data obligation as provision of a 64kbit/s digital connection, equivalent to a basic rate ISDN channel. This is not to be confused with the commitment for universal dialup access to the Internet at a minimum of 19.2kbit/s introduced following the Besley report.

Under the Universal Service Regime the Universal Service Provider is required to take all reasonable steps to ensure that Standard Telephone Services are reasonably accessible to all people in Australia on an equitable basis, wherever they reside or carry on business. Although a variety of carriage services are potentially included in the definition of the Standard Telephone Service, the Universal Service Obligation does not require the Universal Service Provider to provide every possible type of Standard Telephone Service. The obligation is to ensure reasonable access to a 'first phone' for all Australians. ,

Part 3 of the Act establishes the National Relay Service (NRS), which provides persons who are Deaf or who have a hearing or speech impairment with access to a standard telephone service on terms, and in circumstances, that are comparable to the access other Australians have to a standard telephone service. The NRS contract is managed by DCITA on behalf of the Commonwealth, and NRS performance is monitored by the ACA. Costs of the NRS are funded by a levy on the telecommunications industry.

Part 6 of the Act specifies the Telecommunications Ombudsman Scheme (TIO). Each carrier and each eligible carriage service provider must enter into the TIO scheme, where eligible service providers are those companies whose customers are residential and small business consumers who purchase: standard telephone services, public mobile telephone services or Internet connectivity. The TIO scheme provides for the ombudsman to investigate, make determinations relating to or give directions relating to: complaints made by customers about carriage services. The TIO scheme is funded by the telecommunications industry.

Part 8 of the Act deals with the provision of emergency services. The ACA must make a written determination on the provision of emergency services. Such determination is to be made having regard to twelve objectives, which include:

(a) the objective that a carriage service provider who supplies a standard telephone service should provide each end user of that standard telephone service with access, free of charge, to an emergency call service, unless the ACA considers that it would be unreasonable for such access to be provided;

The National Relay Service provides 106 access to emergency services for Deaf people and people with hearing/speech disabilities using text connectivity.

Disability Discrimination Act

Over the past ten years the needs and entitlements of people with disabilities have gained greater recognition in the telecommunications regulatory and consumer protection framework. The telecommunications laws both refer back to the DDA as the over-arching legislation for equitable access by persons with disabilities to telecommunications products and services. Forms of communication, other than voice telephony, such as text connectivity for people with disabilities who require it, are acknowledged in the definition of the Standard Telephone Service. However, with the rapid development and convergence of communications technology, new services are becoming available, social interactions are changing, and customer expectations are increasing; therefore it is imperative that the underlying legislative framework is non-constricting and flexible.

The DDA requires respect for the basic human rights of people with disabilities. It accepts that some differential treatment will be unavoidable, and that not all discriminatory practices can be remedied without imposing unjustifiable hardship. It uses principles of fairness and reasonableness to balance rights with responsibilities.

Broadly speaking HREOC has implemented seven major strategies as provided for in the DDA:

Handling of complaints;
Intervention in court proceedings;
Development of Disability Standards under the DDA;
Granting by HREOC of temporary exemptions from the DDA;
Development of DDA Action Plans by service providers;
Conduct of inquiries by HREOC, including when requested by the Federal Attorney General; and
Awareness-raising activities by HREOC, including publication of Guidelines.

Section 5 of the DDA makes direct discrimination unlawful. If a person or organisation treats a person or his/her associate less favourably, for some reason in connection with his/her actual or presumed disability, it is unlawful.

Section 6 of the DDA defines indirect discrimination and makes it unlawful. It is deemed to occur if an aggrieved person is required to comply with a requirement or condition:

(a) with which a substantially higher proportion of persons without the disability comply or are able to comply; and

(b) which is not reasonable having regard to the circumstances of the case; and

(c) with which the aggrieved person does not or is not able to comply.

Section 11 of the DDA introduces the concept of Unjustifiable Hardship. It does not define Unjustifiable Hardship. It simply states that all relevant circumstances of the particular case are to be taken into account, including:

The nature of any benefit/detriment likely to be accrued/suffered by any persons/organisations;
The effect of a concerned person's disability;
The financial circumstances and anticipated cost for the one claiming unjustifiable hardship; and
The content of a person's/organisation's Action Plan, if one exists.

Section 24 of the DDA makes it unlawful to discriminate in the provision of goods, services and facilities, unless unjustifiable hardship would result.

Consumer Representation and Consultation

Section 593 of the Telecommunications Act 1997 provides for funding of consumer representation and research. The Commonwealth has allocated $3.4 million over the four years 2002-2006 for Section 593 grants. For the year 2003-2004 up to $700,000 has been allocated for consumer representation, and up to $100,000 has been allocated for research.

The Consumers' Telecommunications Network (CTN) receives funding, as do TEDICORE (Telecommunications and Disability Consumer Representation) and DTAN (Deaf Telecommunications Access and Networking). TEDICORE and DTAN are projects auspiced by Blind Citizens Australia and the Australian Association of the Deaf. Other peak disability organisations also received small funding grants in 2002-03, mostly to cover sitting fees for consumer representatives participating in consultative forums.

Following the Besley Report (2000) it is a specific priority of the 'Grants to Fund telecommunications Representation' program that people with disabilities, and consumers from regional, rural and remote Australia have adequate representation. However, the legislation does not restrict grants to organisations representing residential and small business consumers.

Telstra, Optus, the ACA and ACIF all maintain their own community consultative mechanisms. These include direct consultation with representatives of people with disabilities, and the participation of consumer advocates in telecommunications industry forums and seminars.

The ACIF Disability Advisory Body (DAB) provides professional advice to ACIF regarding the implications for telecommunications consumers with disabilities of ACIF's proposed Codes and Standards. The advice is provided at the project proposal stage of each new Code and Standard. The DAB advises on the extent of the disability implications according to the following:

High - widespread implications for disabled consumers over and above those experienced by other consumers, warranting specific provisions in the Code/Standard
Medium - moderate implications for disabled consumers over above those experienced by other consumers, warranting consideration of disability needs in the Code/Standard
Low - negligible implications for disabled consumers over and above those experienced by other consumers, and not warranting specific consideration in drafting of the Code/Standard

The DAB also provides professional advice as to appropriate methods of consultation/involvement in the development of an ACIF Code/Standard

The quality of the representation of consumers with disabilities is observed to be outstanding and the breadth of issues covered extensive. Increased workload for consumer organisations has resulted from: the growth in carriers and CSPs, the rapid growth in both mobile communications and Internet usage, increased numbers of consultative committees and industry forums, and increased activity in the development of consumer codes. Organisations with minimal resources and limited access to technical expertise have: consistently made written submissions to telecommunications inquiries, produced papers, participated in national forums, and contributed as members of advisory committees. It is unreasonable to expect these organisations to keep up with current developments and emerging issues without a commensurate increase in resources.

Major Issues for People with disabilities

Disability Equipment Programs

Each of Telstra and Optus operates a Disability Equipment Program (DEP) to provide customers with disabilities with specialised or modified customer equipment to enable them to use the fixed line telephone network. These programs are restricted to Telstra or Optus customers respectively, and Telstra has a substantially wider variety of equipment available, in particular catering much better to the needs of people with disabilities other than deafness. In January Telstra wholesale announced arrangements whereby other companies can access disability equipment. The requirement for TTYs to be issued by telecommunications companies received a legislative base through the Telecommunications Act 1997 and Regulations 1998, as Telstra became the Universal Service Provider and took management responsibility for the DEP.

Opinion is divided on whether Disability Equipment Programs should be extended to cover mobile phones and accessories that might be required by persons with disabilities. Such extension is naturally the strongly expressed wish of consumer advocates, whereas other stakeholders are concerned about the cost of extending the range of products in the absence of a clearly established legal obligation to do so. The legal basis for such extension would seem to be supported by advice contained in HREOC (2001b, although the only supporting case law seems to be the Scott case. HREOC (2001b) includes the following advice.

A. Provision of equipment as part of or in association with telecommunications service

1. Telecommunications service providers who provide customer equipment as part of or in association with their service (whether directly or through agents, partners, franchisees etc) are obliged to provide equipment which is accessible to and usable by people with disabilities - other than in cases where it can be demonstrated that this would involve unjustifiable hardship. This obligation was examined at length in the Commission's decisions in Scott v Telstra: available on line at http://scaleplus.law.gov.au/html/ddadec/0/95/0/DD000060.htm.

2. The Disability Discrimination Act requires accessibility of the services a service provider is in the business of providing, rather than requiring provision of new or different services which might better suit the needs of a customer with a disability. But, as found in the Scott v Telstra case, the particular equipment a service provider currently provides does not conclusively define the service for this purpose. In that case Telstra was held to be required to provide a TTY where required in place of its standard handset.

3. This obligation to provide accessible equipment is not restricted, in its terms or effect, to services presently comprised within the scope of the Standard Telephone Service and Universal Service Obligation provisions of the Telecommunications Act, or the specific provisions of that Act regarding disability access.

4. In particular, obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act include equipment provided in conjunction with mobile services as well as fixed line services. Mobile services were examined in some detail in the Commission's inquiry regarding access to mobile phone services by hearing aid users: see http://www.humanrights.gov.au/disability_rights/inquiries/MP_index/mp_i….

5. The obligation to make equipment accessible and usable includes ensuring that equipment is directly usable, so far as this can be achieved without unjustifiable hardship. If and to the extent that the equipment does not directly achieve accessible service, the DDA also requires ensuring compatibility with assistive devices used by people with disabilities to achieve access (again subject to the unjustifiable hardship limitation).

6. Accessibility obligations might in principle be met either by ensuring that all equipment provided as part of or in association with the service is accessible (so far as is possible without unjustifiable hardship); or by ensuring access to specialised equipment as required, or by a combination of these approaches.

7. To the extent that a specialised equipment approach is relied on (i. e. to the extent that disability access requirements are not met instead by a universal design approach to all equipment), service providers will need to take particular care to avoid discrimination by ensuring that people with disabilities have access to the same choices of services, and at the same prices, as other users; and also to ensure that discrimination does not occur in practice through people with disabilities not having effective access to accurate information on services or equipment available which would provide accessible service. ).

On the other hand, Telstra claims that extension of its DEP to include mobile phones and accessories required by people with disabilities would need a legal basis. Certainly, if such provision was to be mandated a legal basis would seem to be needed; but otherwise there seems to be no formal impediment to expanding the program voluntarily. Of course program expansion would have financial implications, but it would also have benefits to make mobile telecommunications more accessible to many people with disabilities. In communicating with this author, Telstra stated: "While it is possible that in some cases obligations may arise under the DDA in relation to accessibility of mobile services and mobile phones, the DDA does not establish any specific positive requirements for service providers. The DDA establishes certain unlawful behaviours, which must be tested on a case by case basis."

There is strong agreement among consumer advocates for an independent, consumer-controlled and industry-funded DEP. DTAN (2002A) has compiled a list of requirements for the DEP, on behalf of Deaf people, which is consistent with the views of other groups: TEDICORE, ACE, Deafness Forum and CTN. TEDICORE states its vision for a reformed and unified DEP as:

An independent and consumer-based Telecommunications Disability Program will give people with disabilities the freedom of choice of carriage service provider and equip them with the hardware and/or software to equitably access the telecommunications network.

The need for reform of the Telstra Equipment Program was raised by consumer advocates in 2001 and widely discussed. ACIF convened a stakeholders forum to discuss current and future issues concerning the provision of disability equipment. Following the ACIF forum HREOC, ACA and DCITA have reached agreement on what the DDA implies for the provision of access equipment for people with disabilities to use the standard telephone service.

Establishment of a reformed, updated and consolidated DEP may require changes to the TCPSS 1999. The prospect of legislative change does not negate the possibility of reform, but it does confirm the need for detailed investigation and thorough analysis of the propositions put by consumer advocates. In particular, a thorough economic analysis would be required, taking into account any hidden costs of current programs that may be being absorbed by Telstra and Optus. One approach might be to establish a Disability Equipment Program in parallel with, or in conjunction with, the National Relay Service. A program established and operated in a similar manner to the NRS could meet the major concerns of consumer advocates. It might be: industry funded under the Universal Service Obligation, managed by the ACA, and publicly accountable by annual report from the ACA tabled in the Federal Parliament.

Any-to-any Text Connectivity

The challenge of any-to-any text connectivity has gained prominence during 2002, and in February 2003 the ACIF held a seminar to discuss a technical solution. ACIF has convened a working group representing industry, the ACA and consumer advocates to review options for interim solutions. As of May 2003 the working group has held two meetings, and good progress towards any-to-any text connectivity is anticipated.

Any-to-any voice connectivity is a well understood concept in telecommunications, that networks should be interoperable nationally and internationally, and that a subscriber using a fixed or mobile terminal should be able to communicate directly by voice with another subscriber anywhere in the world. Any-to-any voice connectivity is a hallmark of voice telephony in Australia, with the Universal Service Regime guaranteeing connectivity for all, and the well established interoperability between the fixed and mobile networks.

The growth of mobile telephony has raised community expectations of being able to communicate for business or social purposes with anyone from anywhere at any time. But Deaf people, and people with hearing/speech impairments, who rely on text communication have been left behind. The TTY text telephones used in Australia only operate over the fixed line analogue network, a network which is only slowly growing and which is diminishing in relative importance in supporting an expanding range of telecommunications services.

Text telephony is a mainstream technology and service, there's nothing special in terms of adaptation of the basic technology to take account of the specific disabilities of the people who use it most. It's simply that text telephony is of little interest to the vast majority of telephone users, people who can both speak and hear adequately. Text-based communication takes up to ten times as long and lacks the spontaneity of voice-based communication.

The TTY in Australia uses the Baudot-50 standard. Baudot is a 5-bit code that does not distinguish between upper and lower case letters. It originated with telex terminals. The transmission rate is 50bit/s. Only a small number of other countries use the Baudot-50 standard, and the United States uses Baudot-45, with a transmission rate of 45.45bit/s rather than 50bit/s. These bit rates are incompatible with the minimum bit rates for most modems, 300 or 110 bit/s. The Australian TTY also uses unusual frequencies of 1400 and 1800 Hz, which causes a problem with GSM and CDMA transmission.

The installed base of up to 15,000 TTY text telephones in Australia enables: telecommunication within the Deaf community; people who are deaf or hearing/speech impaired to communicate with businesses, government agencies and various organisations which have a TTY; and TTY users to communicate through the National Relay Service with the rest of the community. But the TTY does not currently work with a GSM or CDMA mobile phone, and cannot be used for international calls. TTY's do not work from behind the digital/analogue interface of many telephone systems used by organisations which have multiple incoming lines and internal extensions. Some universities in Australia are changing to VoIP for their telephone systems, which will not support TTYs. Many retirement villages and nursing homes have switchboards with a digital interface on the client side. This means that many residents who need text connectivity cannot use their TTY text phones. Finally, Telstra's proposal to use CDMA-based WLL technology for connectivity in remote areas has alarmed the Deaf community, since once again a TTY-incompatible technology is being deployed.

A variety of standards for text telephones are used around the world, and in some countries multiple standards are used. These standards are incompatible, and their text telephones perform differently in fixed, mobile, analogue or digital environments. Most text telephone protocols do not work over the GSM or CDMA digital mobile networks. One problem is that although some text telephones can work with different protocols, they are generally not automatically switchable and need to be changed manually. Almost 90% of TTYs in Australia, for example, can use the American Baudot-45 protocol; but the user needs to make the change manually, which is unreliable in the context of an incoming call.

The longer-term solution resides with an inclusive and flexible international standard for interworking. A suite of standards is needed to underpin multimedia communication, including text connectivity, starting with full duplex text/voice conversations. Of course the starting point for such standards is the ITU-T, and good progress has already been made. The V.18 text telephony interworking recommendation describes the V.21, V.23, EDT and Baudot standards, and provides interworking between eight different text telephone protocols (six of which are commonly used in Europe). It has an auto-detection feature for the different protocols, meaning that a V.18 modem will identify the modem of the other party and will adjust to its specific protocol. V.18 modems are becoming available in the United Kingdom, Italy and some other countries, but they do not yet seem to be readily available in Australia.

Experts in Australia differ on the relevance for Australia of implementation of an interworking standard such as V.18. One school of thought asserts that since practically everyone uses the TTY then there is no incompatibility problem. This seems to overlook the reality that the TTY can no longer do the job alone, being confined to direct access over the fixed line analogue network in Australia. Another school of thought asserts that the TTY with its Baudot-50 interface simply cannot do the job to support text connectivity over a variety of network interfaces including international calls, and that the key to the solution is an interworking standard that includes Baudot-50.

DCITA believes that technological progress is likely to lead to a solution for TTY text connectivity using mobile phones. In recent months the ACA has commenced research to find a solution to the problem of text communication over the mobile telephone network. ACA is exploring future trends and innovations in telecommunications that will give people with disabilities who rely on text communication access to the 106 text emergency call service on their mobile phones. According to the ACA, preliminary results have been encouraging, and the ACA anticipates that its research will be completed by the end of June 2003. Remaining questions involve the feasibility and speed at which outcomes of the research could be implemented, as well as management of the associated costs.

Telecommunications Disability Standard

Section 380 of the Telecommunications Act 1997 provides for the making of standards for customer equipment used by the general public to access the standard telephone service, with reference to the DDA as the overarching legislation in Australia concerning the rights of persons with disabilities. Prior to 1997 there was a Telecommunications Disability Standard with two requirements, which were both referenced as examples in Section 380: an induction loop to assist people using hearing aids, and a raised dot on the number 5 on the telephone keypad to help blind people.

In February 2002 the ACA agreed to the making of: Telecommunications Disability Standard (Requirements for Customer Equipment for use with the Standard Telephone Service - Features for special needs of persons with disabilities - AS/ACIF S040) 2002. In making this first disability standard ACA shared the widespread disappointment of consumer advocates over: the extremely limited content of the standard; industry's slow progress in developing the standard; and the apparent lack of awareness and recognition of international trends concerning features on telecommunications equipment for access by people with disabilities. The standard contains reference only to the two features mentioned above.

The ACA requested that its Communications Technical Regulation Advisory Committee (CTRAC) advise the ACA on issues that deserve further consideration for potential inclusion in a telecommunications disability standard or adoption as industry guidelines; and that CTRAC provide advice on compliance arrangements for disability standards. In March 2003 CTRAC recommended that guidelines should be developed rather than a more comprehensive disability standard. CTRAC had before it a well researched document that could form the basis of a disability standard, covering: fixed line phones, cordless phones, mobile phones and payphones. The document was based on extensive research including, but not limited to, guidelines and features documented in CTN (1997), ATIA (2001), and Gill and Shipley (1999). ATIA (2001), for example, considers nine aspects of telephones: whole telephone, handset, sound, keys, keypad, control buttons, special functions, display and other visual indications, and accessories.

Tension often exists as to whether accessibility requirements and features should be embodied in mandatory standards, in voluntary guidelines, or in some other way. In general terms consumer advocates prefer standards, and industry representatives prefer guidelines; but in the real world, industry by industry and country by country, this demarcation is not so clear and resolution of the standards/guidelines dichotomy is often controversial.

Consumer advocates strongly favour an enhanced Section 380 disability standard, because:

It will result in an agreed baseline of accessibility for the standard telephone service;
It will encourage the development and marketing of accessible telephones, based on inclusive design principles, with flexible features;
It will reduce the dependency of many people with disabilities on programs which provide modified telephones or special accessories, and will therefore increase consumer choice among CSPs rather than perpetuate the anti-competitive situation which exists today; and
It will avoid the dumping of legacy telephones in Australia, unwanted in other countries because they lack the basic features of inclusive and ergonomic design.

Some industry representatives oppose an enhanced Section 380 disability standard, because:

They do not like further regulation, preferring to take guidance from consumer preferences expressed through market trends; and
They are concerned that as a net importer of customer equipment the Australian telecommunications industry will face limited product choice and higher product costs.

A Section 380 disability standard would be beneficial to consumers, since it would ensure that accessible telephones were widely available. Even if a disability standard is limited in scope, it is better than nothing; provided that it cannot be called as a complete defence in a complaint of discrimination under the DDA. Guidelines have no legal standing: voluntary guidelines have no force, so their benefit is confined to awareness-raising and information about good practice.

Whether it is decided to develop a disability standard under Section 380 of the Telecommunications Act, an industry code or industry standard under Part 6 of the Act, or equipment guidelines, it is highly desirable that the specification is consistent with the DDA. The specification should provide the maximum possible level of certainty to consumers with disabilities about their rights, and to equipment providers about their responsibilities. That is, the specification should be sufficiently strong and comprehensive that demonstrated compliance by an organisation would be a strong defence against a DDA complaint. Adoption of a sufficiently strong specification on accessible equipment by a carriage service provider, and an action plan to implement it, could be used to support an application for a temporary exemption under the DDA.

Mobile Phones

The main problems involving mobile phones concern people with sensory/speech disabilities. Deaf people using hearing aids experienced major incompatibility with the GSM technology, people who relied on text connectivity found that their TTYs did not work with mobile phones when the AMPS network was closed, SMS is good for Deaf people but high usage becomes expensive, and blind people cannot use most of the features of digital mobile phones.

During July 1999 a group of people with hearing impairments lodged a DDA complaint, alleging unlawful discrimination in that the complainants had great difficulty in using GSM digital mobile phone services. Electromagnetic fields generated by many digital mobile phones interfere with hearing aids to such an extent that hearing aid wearers cannot use those mobile phones. Hearing impaired users of mobile phones faced restrictions on their capacity to access the same mobile telephone service that the community as a whole was using. In 1999 the AMPS network was being closed, and the CDMA network was just being established, thus mobile phone users had little choice but GSM.

There were two components to effective conciliation of the complaint against service providers: Firstly, to remedy the situation of hearing aid users with GSM phones who cannot use them and were locked into contracts; and secondly, to make sure that the same problem does not arise again. HREOC addressed the complaint resolution through a public inquiry. It reviewed three options and favoured an approach that would both address systemic issues and recognise existing consumer rights. It recommended that service providers sign an Industry Code, and also negotiate remedies for people who wear hearing aids and who entered contracts for GSM services that they could not use effectively. The kernel of the solution was to transfer GSM customers suffering hearing aid incompatibility problems over to the CDMA network, and for the telephone service providers to sort out the interworking arrangements. However, this solution did not solve the problem for everyone, since some incompatibility remains; and a deadlock would have resulted if the CDMA technology was not on hand to save the day.

Since most hearing aid users can use CDMA mobile phones, and since Telstra's CDMA network is Australia's largest terrestrial network, one may conclude that the problem is solved. That is true to some extent; but it still means that hearing aid users have limited consumer choice in the competitive mobile telecommunications marketplace. The history of the incompatibility of the GSM technology with commonly used hearing aids should not be forgotten; since it emphasises the importance of considering the impact of technological change on all consumers, including people with specific disabilities.

People who are blind have enjoyed the flexibility that results from mobile communications. Using their mobile phones they can find each other more easily in public places, and they have the added security of being able to make a phone call if they are lost or feeling endangered. However, they do not get all that they pay for in a mobile phone contract or when they pay for the mobile phone upfront. Many people with low vision find it difficult to find a mobile phone with a large enough, brightly lit screen that they can comfortably read. So if they cannot read the screen, people with low vision face the same denial of access to the features of their mobile phones as do people who are blind.

People who are blind have very limited access to the standard features of mobile phones. In general terms they can only make calls by manually entering the number to be called, and they can receive calls if the phone rings or vibrates. But they do not know the battery strength, the signal strength, if the PIN has been wrongly entered, if calls are missed, if the phone is accidentally on divert, or anything else that is shown on the screen. They cannot use the menu system, the telephone directory system, or anything but the most elementary speed dialling features. And, of course, they cannot use SMS. These features have been introduced gradually, as network services have been enhanced, and as new models of mobile phones have been released. It can even be said of many people who are blind, that they don't know what they're missing. However, at the end of the day, people who are blind pay the same prices for their mobile phones and for mobile service contracts as do sighted people.

A mobile phone is a particular kind of small computer: central processor, central memory, and operating system. Data input is via radio, the keyboard, the microphone or the i/o connector (typically at the base of the phone); and output is via radio, the screen and the i/o connector. We are starting to see some convergence with mobile phones towards a smaller number of operating systems each of which is used by multiple brands.

Recent developments indicate that breakthroughs are at hand for blind people to have synthetic speech access to mobile phones. Two companies, one in Germany and the other in Spain, have released software that gives access through synthetic speech output from mobile phones using the Symbian operating system. Symbian is a software licensing company owned by wireless industry leaders. It describes itself as the supplier of the advanced, open, standard operating system for data-enabled mobile phones. Symbian is owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Panasonic, Motorola, Psion, Samsung Electronics, Siemens and Sony Ericsson.

In the United States a woman who is blind recently filed a formal complaint with the FCC against two companies under Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act. The defendants are both manufacturers of wireless telephones and one of them is also a provider of wireless telecommunications services. This filing is the first Formal Complaint submitted to the FCC to enforce the rights provided under Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which requires that telecommunications equipment and services be accessible to and usable by people with disabilities, if readily achievable.

The complaint alleges that the companies' wireless telephones are not accessible to blind persons because the majority of the wireless phone functions can be used only through visual interaction with a menu and display screen. Specifically, she requests that the FCC require the defendant companies to make available for downloading into their wireless telephones the software needed to deploy text to speech capability, which would allow the essential functions and services available through a wireless telephone's visual menu to be accessible to blind customers. The complaint stated that this software already exists and its incorporation into wireless telephones is not only 'readily achievable' -- it has already been deployed on existing wireless telephones and can be deployed on one defendant's high-end current model.

Videocommunication

Videocommunication is a new frontier of personal multimedia telecommunications. It has been well researched and trialled, but the telecommunications platform is not strong enough to support videotelephony and videoconferencing at prices which make it widely accessible to individuals. For many Deaf people the potential of videotelephony is very exciting, since it brings the promise of remote communication in their first language - Auslan in Australia. For many Deaf people English is not their first language, so text communication is by no means a preferred form of communication. However, for effective Auslan communication a high-grade connection is required; Clark and Harper (2002e) state that 384kbit/s is deemed to be optimal.

Deaf people in Australia will enjoy the true liberation of videotelephony when they can communicate with the National Relay Service or with each other from their desktop or notebook computer at home or at work, or from their notebook computer or 3G phone whilst on the move. We can anticipate that the equipment will be available to support this application quite soon - indeed, for the desktop or notebook computer it is already here at reasonable prices. The stumbling blocks lie in the telecommunications network: the cost of broadband Internet connectivity, the cost of data transfer, and the inadequacy of VoIP to support real-time multimedia communication.

During the past decade we have witnessed a steady increase in bandwidth capacity of communication channels, and a steady improvement in video compression techniques. This means that for comparably priced bandwidth the quality of video communication is improving quite rapidly. Notwithstanding this steady increase, we still have not reached the stage where videotelephony is adequate for Auslan communication and generally accessible to people who are deaf. More research is required to optimise video communication for Auslan.

One of the drawbacks of discussion about videotelephony and videoconferencing for Auslan communication and relay interpreting for Deaf people is that it creates excitement and expectations which cannot be fully and universally realised in practice. The major barrier is cost: cost of the fixed or terminal equipment; cost of the data channel for fixed line communications, and cost of the data transfer for mobile or wireless communications. Whilst costs will surely drop, they will continue to be high for many Deaf people on low incomes for some years to come. The equity principle is that people who are deaf should be required to pay the same for video communication using Auslan as people who are hearing pay for voice telephony. Furthermore, the telecommunications industry should absorb the additional cost, to the extent that it would start to cause an unjustifiable hardship.

Payphones

Under the universal service regime public payphones are to be reasonably accessible to all persons, on an equitable basis, wherever they reside or carry on business. There are about 33,500 public payphones in Australia, of which 170 include TTY modules, operated by Telstra as the universal service provider. Another 40,000 payphones are located in private businesses.

TTY payphones enable people who are deaf or hearing/speech impaired to use a payphone. The user can connect directly to another TTY user or may be connected to a voice user through the NRS. The number of TTY payphones increased by ten in 2001-02. Telstra gives priority to provision of TTY payphones in supervised locations with 24 hour access: shopping centres, hospitals, sporting venues, transport terminals, libraries and airports. However, not all TTY payphones are accessible 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.

One approach to increasing the accessibility of public payphones for users with a range of disabilities might be development of an Industry Code on Accessible Payphones. The Code would be developed by ACIF, and could be informed through expertise available from members of the ACIF Disability Advisory Body. Elements of the Code might include: access and location, phone operation, using credit cards and phone cards, coin insertion and retrieval, shortcut keys and direct lines, audio/visual display, phone keypad, security and privacy, installation and maintenance, and operating instructions.

The increase in 2001-02 of just ten TTY payphones seems very low. It's hard to imagine that the number has reached saturation level; rather, there must be some impediments to their greater rollout. Independent research may be needed to determine the appropriate number of TTY payphones based on specific criteria for their deployment. There is also a problem with privately-owned payphones, that many of them are not accessible. Indeed, AAD states that there are cases where accessible public payphones have been replaced by inaccessible private payphones.

Overseas Developments

Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States are the three areas to watch for developments that may have implications for people with disabilities in Australia. Europe and the United Kingdom are relatively strong on research, collaboration, standards and guidelines; and the United States is relatively strong on legislation and regulation. In Australia we can derive considerable benefit by monitoring overseas developments and applying the fruits of research or the benefits of regulation to our own unique situation; however, care must be taken in making international comparisons, since the legal and regulatory systems are different.

The best source of information for Europe and the UK is provided by COST219bis. COST is a framework for European Co-operation in the field Of Scientific and Technical research, emphasising co-ordination of national research throughout Europe. The main objective of COST219bis is to increase the availability of telecommunications services and equipment so that they are accessible to all people, including disabled and older people.

The past fifteen years in Europe has witnessed a transformation in the telecommunications industry from government-owned monopolies to private corporations driven by market competition and profit objectives. Studies carried out by COST219bis confirm that these changes have had a negative impact on the development of standards. The standards developed by the telecommunications industry are more likely to be voluntary, and do not become mandatory unless they are adopted by national regulators. Equipment standards for people with disabilities, and other special needs groups, take second place in standards development to work on protocols that ensure connectivity and enhance service expansion and product development. What seems to have happened in Europe is that government regulation is lagging behind industry fragmentation, and a greater pan-European resolve is needed before telecommunications regulation will deliver protection for all consumers including people with disabilities.

There are three important pieces of legislation in the United States, each of which has a role to play in achieving accessible telecommunications for people with disabilities. These are:

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) 1990;
Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act 1934 (as revised in 1996); and
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act 1973 (as amended in 1998).

The ADA prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in various areas including telecommunications. Title IV of the ADA addresses telephone and television access for people with hearing and speech disabilities. It requires telephone companies to establish interstate and intrastate telecommunications relay services. The Deaf and Disabled Telecommunications Program (DDTP) in California, for example, distributes telecommunications equipment and auspices services for eligible individuals with disabilities. The DDTP is funded by a small surcharge that appears on all Californians' telephone bills. The money collected from this surcharge goes into a trust fund that pays for both the California Telephone Equipment Loan Program and the California Relay Service.

Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act 1996 specifies that provided that it is readily achievable to do so, telecommunications equipment and services must be accessible to and usable by persons with disabilities, or they must at least be compatible with their commonly used assistive technology. The terms 'disability' and 'readily achievable' are defined in the ADA.

'Accessibility' means that each piece of equipment and each service must have one mode operable by a person with any given disability, if readily achievable.
'Usability' refers to a person with a disability having access to the full functionality of the product and having access to the information on how to use telecommunications equipment or services, if readily achievable. This requires product support materials to be accessible.
'Compatibility' is the requirement that if accessibility is not readily achievable a product or service must be made compatible with peripheral devices or specialised customer premises equipment, if compatibility is readily achievable.

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act 1998 requires access to the Federal government's electronic and information technology (EIT) for people with disabilities. The law covers all types of mainstream EIT: office equipment, desktop computers, telecommunications equipment, software, etc. Section 508 requires that when Federal agencies develop, procure, maintain, or use EIT, they shall ensure that it allows Federal employees with disabilities to have access to and use of information and data that is comparable to the access to and use of information and data by Federal employees who are not individuals with disabilities, unless an undue burden would be imposed on the agency. Section 508 also requires that individuals with disabilities, who are members of the public seeking information or services from a Federal agency, have access to and use of information and data that is comparable to that provided to the public who are not individuals with disabilities, unless an undue burden would be imposed on the agency.

The Section 508 law promises to be extremely important, with far-reaching consequences for information and communications technology worldwide. It will benefit people with sensory and physical disabilities in many facets of their daily lives: employment, education, personal computing and telecommunications.

Conclusion

The principles of inclusion - inclusive design of equipment and services, and inclusive organisation of the civil society - give hope that the time will come that special measures for people with disabilities will no longer be necessary. Although much progress has been made since enactment of the DDA in 1992, that time has not yet come. Special measures are still required to assist people with disabilities and to ensure their rights. The discussion paper gives much more detail on the key issues of accessible telecommunications, compared with the presentation in this brief overview; in particular, it gives the background and rationalization for the recommendations. The first recommendation addresses the need for an over-arching body, , ideally convened by HREOC, comprising representatives of all stakeholders: the telecommunications industry, government and consumers with disabilities. Its first major task might be to Examine the recommendations made in this discussion paper and, if considered appropriate to do so, develop strategies for their implementation;

The definition of the standard telephone service recognises text communication as the alternative to voice communication for people with disabilities who require it, and such people may obtain a TTY at an equitable cost from Telstra or Optus. However, the TTY used in Australia does not operate in the full range of telecommunication environments; particularly, it does not give mobile phone access. Much of the discussion on accessible telecommunications in Australia therefore focuses on equitable access through text communication by Deaf people and people who are hearing/speech impaired over fixed line phones, mobile phones and payphones. Other issues are also important for people with a variety of disabilities, and feature in the recommendations: disability equipment programs, telecommunications disability standard, accessibility of payphones and mobile phones, tariffs and research.

Since telecommunications technology is continually changing, driven by competitive pressures to reduce costs and by market demand for new services, the situation for people with disabilities is also continually changing. The telecommunications laws in Australia refer to the DDA as the benchmark for telecommunications accessibility for people with disabilities. The DDA is largely a statement of principle. It relies on successful complaints to confirm suppliers' responsibilities, and it does not contain in-built compliance mechanisms to confirm consumers' rights. Therefore, in Australia's competitive telecommunications environment with light-touch government regulation, it has been appropriate to take stock of telecommunications accessibility for people with disabilities. Following the publication of the discussion paper the stock-take is now complete, and with establishment by HREOC of a high-level accessible telecommunications forum the scene is set for accelerated improvement in telecommunications access for people with disabilities throughout Australia.

Next part: Part 1