Webcast, April 16, 2003
Broadband and the ADA
Presenter:  Frank Bowe. 


Rachel:  Good afternoon everybody and welcome to the webcast on broadband and 
the ADA.  My name is Rachel Kosoy, I am with the Disability Law Resource 
Project, your host for today's event. 

I'm the one who will be moderating the webcast, in other words, I'm going to be 
voicing the questions that you E-mail to the presenter.  And shortly, I will 
introduce our distinguished presenter for today, Frank Bowe. 

First, I just want to mention a couple of technical details.  I want to repeat 
that in order to submit a question, you can -- if you look at the bottom of your 
RealOne player screen, there should be a button that you can click on that to 
submit a question.  And you can go ahead and click that and submit your 
question. 

Alternately, you could open your E-mail and you could submit a question to 
webcast@ILRU.org. 

And please go ahead and submit your questions as soon as you have them because 
that way I'll be able to voice them more quickly to Frank, and also I just want 
to let you know that today's webcast is one hour.  I know some of you know that 
some of our web casts run for an hour and a half.  So if you have questions, 
don't wait, go ahead and submit them. 

And lastly, if anybody has any technical difficulties today, please give us a 
call at (713)-520-0232. 

Okay, now we're ready to begin the web cast.  The topic today is broadband and 
the ADA.  And our presenter today is Frank Bowe.  He is a professor with the 
department of counseling, research, special education and rehabilitation at 
Hofstra University on Long Island.  And I just want to say that he certainly is 
a part of the disability community because the place he works for has as long a 
name as ours and most of the other organizations we work with. 

Frank is also the governmental affairs consultant for the National Association 
of the Deaf.  He has worked on technology and disability policy since 1977.  At 
that point, he was named by the house committee on science and technology -- I'm 
sorry, the chairman of the House committee on science and technology to a panel 
which was charged with reviewing the entire federal research enterprise in order 
to identify activities related to disability. 

Later, he served as the director of research for the Access Board.  He wrote the 
original version of Section 508 of the Rehab Act and he was also the key 
architect behind the television decoder circuit tri act of 1990.  He's been a 
key player in the early and mid '90's in developing the Telecommunications Act 
of 1996.  So we are very pleased to have you with us today, Dr. Bowe, and I will 
go ahead and turn it over to you at this point. 


Frank:  Thank you, Rachel and thank you everybody.  I hope you guys can hear me.  
I'm accompanied here by Glen Shepherd who will be signing for me whatever Rachel 
says. 

And I want to just begin briefly by introducing the topic to put it into plain 
English, and I will then stop for questions and then we'll continue, stop for 
questions again and continue.  And I've told Rachel that if she gets a question 
and she feels she wants to ask right away, to go ahead and go that.  So at any 
time, Rachel, you can interrupt me.  I'm used to it.  My students are constantly 
interrupting me. 

Rachel:  Okay. 

Frank:  I'm going to be talking about something called broadband, and to try to 
explain what broadband is, when we talk about broadband, we're talking about 
telephone communications that are very high speed and that can carry voices, 
video and data all at the same time over the same wire.  And there is something 
called high-speed always-on connectivity and what that is is that if I decided I 
wanted to get on the Internet, I just touch a button, and boom, I'm on.  There 
is no dial-up.  There is no handshake, there is no procedure that you go through 
with your typical Internet service provider, dialing a certain number and you 
wait while they're connecting and so forth.  None of that happens.  You just 
touch a button and, boom, you're there.  So we call that always-on. 

Now, when we say high speed, we mean something that is what we normally call at 
this point in terms of megabits per second, but in order to try to explain it, 
it's mainly 100 or 200 times faster than your typical voice telephone call is.  
You need that kind of speed if you're going to be carrying video and if you're 
going to be carrying data. 

If you have your typical modem, it would probably connect -- your dial-up modem 
would connect at maybe 45 or 46,000 bits per second.  It's called bits per 
second, but a broadband connection you would be talking something more like 
200,000, up to maybe 2 megabits per second and now something very exciting is 
happening, which is one reason we're talking about this today.  And that is that 
at least one company, Verizon, has now announced that they will start giving us 
real live human beings and not just use corporations, so real live residential 
customers, broadband that can go as fast as five to ten megabits per second. 

Now, to understand how exciting that is, that means if I want to have a voice 
telephone call with, let's say, Glen who is the interpreter or if I want to -- 
if he's home and I'm in my office, I would connect with him.  I can see him in 
real motion and it's like watching a movie.  It's very, very high quality video.  
So he will hear my voice and of course I will see him signing, and if he had a 
business card, he could fax it could me right over the same line that he is 
hearing me and I am seeing him.  Nobody has a second line that is needed.  So we 
have the voice and the video and we have the data all in one line at one time. 

Now, the stuff is starting to happen and ver sigh son has said over the next 
five years they will be bringing in fairly high-speed connection to all of us.  
And this has tremendous applications for people with disabilities which we'll 
get to in a minute. 

But this seems to be a good time to pause and to refresh and let anybody ask me 
anything so far. 

Rachel:  Okay, I haven't gotten questions so far.  If a few people have 
submitted them, then because our technology isn't as good as what Frank is 
telling us about, it will probably be another half a minute before I get them.  
So why don't you go ahead at this time and hopefully I'll have the questions by 
the next time you pause. 

Frank:  Okay.  One of the things that is happening with broadband is that if you 
have broadband connected in your home, you probably will move your personal 
computer out of your office and into your living room.  And another thing you 
will do is you will just regard it almost as if it's a phone book or a day 
runner or a favorite book of poetry or whatever, you will just regard it as an 
instantly available resource.  You just touch a button and, boom, Internet and 
you find what you want to find.  We have people who have broadband connections 
at home with computers right in the living room with the TV set and it's used 
whenever they want to look something up if they want to connect with someone.  
It is really changing the way we use the Internet because it's always on, and 
it's very high speed.  Now there, is one other aspect I haven't mentioned yet 
and that is that it's multimedia.  And the fact that it's multimedia is 
interesting.  I'm deaf.  I don't hear anything, not even an atomic bomb.  So for 
me, anything --

Hold on a minute, folks.  We've lost our Internet connection.  I'm going to 
restart and let's give us a few seconds before we start talking here.  Give me a 
ten second count down before you start talking. 

Hold on just a second. 

Just count to ten and resume.  Wait a minute.  We're having serious network 
problems here, hold on. 

Rachel:  Okay. 

(Please stand by... )

All right, we're going to try reconnecting.  They're trying to track down the 
problem down there.  I'm going to go ahead and start the broadcast.  Just give 
me ten seconds of silence and begin talking again and here we go. 

Rachel:  Hi, everybody.  We really apologize for the technical difficulties that 
we've been having.  We want to let you know that Dr. Bowe will continue to 
present at this point, and because our time is shortening, if your questions are 
not able to be answered live today, please submit them to us and Dr. Bowe will 
answer them and E-mail you back the responses. 

Okay, Frank, back to you. 

Frank:  Okay, guys, do you want me to continue assuming everything is back up? 

Rachel:  Yeah, let's continue unless our technical guy, Rob, comes back on and 
lets us know that it's not working. 

Frank:  Right.  Okay.  I was saying that with multimedia and I need to explain 
that when we talk about broadband, we mean it's multimedia in digital form.  And 
digital form means it's in 1's and 0's.  So whether it's a voice, or data or a 
video, it is 1's and 0's and the fact that it is 1's and 0's at bottom means 
that it doesn't really care what form it takes.  It could be in data, it could 
be in video, but the 1's and the 0's, they don't care.  So this means because I 
do care that I have the opportunity to do something called protocol conversion, 
which is another one of those difficult names. 

All it means is that because I can't hear, I cannot accept information in all 
audible forms.  And the protocol --

Rachel:  Frank, this is Rachel, I'm cutting in. 
Frank, I just wanted to let you know that we're not back up and running yet and 
if you could hold your comments then we want everybody to be able to hear them. 

Frank:  Okay. 

Rachel:  We're getting a whole bunch --

Frank:  Be quiet for a few minutes? 

Rachel:  We're getting a whole bunch much phone calls and E-mail and we're 
collecting everyone's contact information so we can get back in touch with them.

Rachel, this is Rob, as far as our side is concerned, we are broadcasting now 
and we do have 30 people actively connected and listening. 

Rachel:  So, okay.  I apologize.  I got misinformation over here in my office.  
So, Frank, I'll back out at this point and you can continue. 


Frank:  Okay.  Anyway, the fact that it is in 0's and 1's and I can't hear means 
that I can't specify how I want the information to be in data.  Now, dat ta I 
can read so we would call that a protocol conversion meaning something that 
comes to me via -- and the flag will say you can't go any further in voice, 
we'll change you over to data.  So instead of my hearing or trying to hear a 
sound, I'm going to basically get captions or get speech recognition to change 
it into text so I can read. 

Now, people who are blind -- I have a lot of friends who are blind and are 
constantly E-mailing me.  What they will do is I will get information that is 
perhaps textual in nature and I can specify that they prefer to receive this 
orally.  So there will be a flag and it will say if you're going to send this 
onto Charlie Crawford or Larry or anyone else who happens to be blind, you're 
going to continue the transmission in oral form.  So speech synthesis or text to 
speech will take over and read what is in the 1's and 0's.  This has tremendous, 
tremendous possibilities for all kinds of communications, and I do think it's 
very important for people with disabilities. 

Now, that is an overview of broadband and now I want to mention a couple of 
applications for people with disabilities, but before I do the applications for 
people with disabilities, Rachel, do you want to read over a question or should 
I just continue? 

Rachel:  I have a couple of questions in, but actually I'll just ask you one of 
them and the other two I believe you're going to get to in your presentation.  
So the one question has to do with when you mentioned that people's computers 
will be in their living rooms.  The question is then, will we be watching TV on 
our computers instead of using televisions? 

Frank:  Okay, the answer to that question is you could.  Yes, you could.  People 
could be doing the video and the TV and everything all in one, a super duper 
kind of machine.  On the other hand, because you might simply prefer to reserve 
your personal computer screen for other things, maybe not.  The point I'm trying 
to make with having the PC in the living room, is that it's no longer seen as 
just kind of a difficult to use machine.  It's no longer seen as something that 
requires a lot of setup time.  It's no longer seen as a product that belongs in 
an office.  Instead, it seems to be very easy, a snap to use, you touch a button 
and you're right there.  And it also seems to be something that's part of life 
and not just part of the office.  So you find people making it an integral part 
of their lives the whole time they're up 18 hours a day.  That was the point I 
was trying to make. 

Rachel:  Okay, great.  All right, I'll hold these other questions until the next 
period. 

Frank:  Okay.  Now I'm going to give you a couple of possible applications for 
people with disabilities, and I want to start with maybe the most radical, and 
I'm doing this because the Rehabilitation Act is now up for reauthorization, and 
this has to do with who we have -- has to do with what you might call 
rehabilitation facilities or independent living facilities of the 21st century.  
And we have, as usual with technology, we have one of those very forbidding 
names for it, and the name is called telepresence.  Now, telepresence is in 
effect a wall, and on that wall is a very large screen that you would swear is a 
very big TV screen.  It's not.  It's a very big telephone screen, and the 
difference is very important because being a telephone, it needs a switch.  So 
when it's connecting any two telephone numbers, meaning it could connect me in 
my office to an independent living consumer who is in her living room in her 
home, 30 miles away, but for her, the effect is as if I'm sitting right there in 
the living room with her because she sees me, she could almost touch me right 
there on that big wall.  We call that telepresence.  It is made possible by 
broadband, by high-speed, always-on connectivity we were talking about.  And 
this means that if I have someone who is a real expert at, let me say, I don't 
know, training people who are blind how to repair cars just to pick some absurd 
example, we have -- there is only one person in the country who knows how to 
teach blind people how to repair automobiles, and that persons happens to be 
Larry and he is living in Hawaii.  Now we have blind people in north Dakota who 
have their hearts set on becoming auto mechanics.  And what will happen here is 
that both of them will connect to Larry, and Larry will physically be right 
there, right beside them and the rehabilitation counselors or whoever is with 
them. 

And he will be able to show them, you do this and you do that and show them how 
to do it with the car.  Or if someone is mentally retarded and is training with 
Marriott corporation and learning how to do cleaning in hotel rooms, you can 
have the Marriott corporation trainer anywhere in the world appear right there 
on that screen and it's as if that person is in that hotel room right with the 
person who is being trained. 

And will actually take them step by step of how to do the routine, how to do the 
bathroom, how to wash the windows, how to set up the room.  You can actually see 
the person right there on the screen on the wall.  And this kind of training 
would be made possible regardless of geographical boundaries.  It would connect 
experts with people who have disabilities, no matter where the people live. 

It will leap frog all of those structures that we now have on travel, travel 
expenses, what kind of travel is authorized, out of state travel, but for 
vocation rehabilitation and people in independent living, counselors and for the 
clients themselves. 

I found this to be enormously exciting and I think it could prove to be very, 
very cost efficient because once you set this up, you basically have no 
continuing expenses because this is on the Internet and the connections are 
there and you are paying your basic rate anyway.  There is no travel expenses, 
no hotel, no food, no per deem.  So I think it will be less expensive than 
things are now. 

And I am really very excited about this and what Verizon is doing with the 
technology will make this possible for us and it will happen within maybe three 
or four or five years.  Unfortunately, people in Congress, especially on the 
House side do not seem to grasp this kind of potential and not having any 
success at all in getting them to authorize this kind of thing as part of the 
Rehab Act. 

I want to mention another application of the same technology and that has to do 
with interpreters.  There are not enough interpreters in the country, and 
whenever I need one I have to schedule them one or two weeks this advance.  The 
interpreter will have to spend a lot of time traveling.  So that is unproductive 
time when interpreters are not being paid and the interpreters skills are not 
being used.  With telepresence, Glen could be sitting on the beach and if I need 
him, he would connect with me as if he's right there on that wall in this room 
with me.  And whatever he hears, he will be signing, whether it's my doctor 
talking to me, my lawyer talking to me, my dean talking to me or whoever, and he 
has no travel requirements.  Now, we do have some other stuff up and running 
now.  We do now, it's called video interpreting.  Some people call it video 
relay interpreting, and it is revolutionary and what the interpreters are now 
doing is they are are billing by the minute.  They are not billing by a two-hour 
minimum, they bill by the minute and if I owe the interpreter for seven minutes, 
I pay for seven minutes.  That will go a long way to resolving the shortage.  It 
will also make it possible for someone like me who has something that's less 
than an hour or two hours long to be able to engage an interpreter without 
paying the two-hour minimum fee. 

Now, a third application of the same technology, taking it a step further is 
called telemedicine.  Now, telemedicine, there are a lot of people who have 
disabilities who have rare conditions where they might have a rare disorder, a 
rare secondary disorder. 

A lot of people, quadraplegics for example have acid reflux.  They need to have 
the capability of connecting them with someone who understands the acid reflux 
problem for people with quadriplegia.  This might mean an entire couple of days 
to travel to go to the city to get the specialist to look at them.  Instead, you 
can use a very high-speed connectivity where the doctor can almost, as if, be 
physically right there with the patient, no matter where the patient is living.  
He can do the examination with fairly high quality video and can even read a 
very high quality X-ray that's faxed on the same phone line and can give the 
consultation regardless of where the patient is located. 

That's the exciting applications of broadband for people with disabilities.  
Rachel, that's your cue for asking more questions. 

Rachel:  Okay, I got it.  I have three questions for you at this point.  The 
first one asks is the broadband service similar to the Cox high-speed Internet 
service where a cable modem is only needed?  There is absolutely no type of 
dial-up needed. 

Frank:  Yes.  Yes, it is.  The only difference here is that what they are 
providing now with a cable modem is slow compared to what I've been describing.  
But, yes, it's the same thing.  You can get it on cable, you can get it on DSL 
on your telephone. 

Rachel:  Okay, great.  Okay, the next question is -- refers to how you were 
mentioning that independent living centers can cut down on their travel costs 
using this technology.  And the question is won't this equipment and technology 
be too expensive for the independent living centers to purchase and use? 

Frank:  Okay, that's a good question.  If you go out and buy it today, probably 
yes.  It's probably too expensive.  If you -- number one, there is a couple of 
options that you have.  One is here at my university we are installing this 
stuff right and left and we're putting it into my new office building and in the 
building right across the street and we're putting it into all kinds of labs 
that we have here and we can make it available.  We have independent living 
centers not far from here.  One is just five miles from here.  We can make it 
available to them.  If they make an appointment and come over, we won't charge 
them and they can use it.  That's possibility No. 1. 
Possibility No. 2, if you wait a little bit, six months to a year or if you 
write a grant application and say we're planning to use it now.  By the time 
your grant comes through, it will probably be much more affordable.  This is 
because it's basically computer technology.  It's like anything with computers, 
the computer that's on my desk now that I use every day just for my own personal 
stuff here at the university is more powerful and it's faster, it's more capable 
than the computers that are in all of NYU when I was a doctoral student there.  
I'll give you an example, and that machine at NYU costs $200,000.  My machine on 
my desk top is running the university maybe 1800. 

Rachel:  Okay.  That's helpful.  The last question also is about money.  This 
comes from somebody who has heard about this video relay interpreting service, 
and the question is is that free like the regular relay service or did you say 
that the video one costs money? 

Frank:  It is free to people who use it.  It's available now and you can use it 
and it is free and you can connect.  I believe the Washington state relay 
system, if you connect to them over the Internet, that's of course a free 
connection for you as a consumer, and they will then connect to whoever the 
hearing person is that you want to talk to. 

Now, they will recover their costs in making that first phone call through the 
relay funds either in the state of Washington or the national one with the FCC 
in Washington.  So what the consumer ends up paying is as if they had made a 
direct, person to person phone call, directly connecting to the individual.  So 
if I'm calling you in Houston, I would pay what is computed to be the costs of 
making your voice phone call to Houston, Texas, over a typical voice line, 
meaning maybe two dollars or three dollars for a relatively short phone call.  
There will be no additional costs for any of the video or the relay or the 
interpreting charges.  All of that will go over to either the state relay or the 
federal relay trust fund. 

Rachel:  Okay, great.  Thanks for clearing that up.  Those are the questions -- 
I've asked you all the questions that I have for right now. 

Frank:  Okay, I think what I want to talk about now is very briefly where we 
stand now with all of this. 

We have absolutely no legislation anywhere that requires accessibility for 
broadband.  There is no protection for people like me who need accessibility 
accommodations in broadband.  Nothing.  It doesn't exist. 

We do have some provisions called section 255 as part of the Telecommunications 
Act of 1996.  It only covers the old fashioned TTY kind of connections, what we 
call narrowband.  It does not apply to broadband.  And that is why a number of 
us, including people who work with me on this paper that I wrote, have been 
advocating for the Congress or the federal communications commission to say, 
well, listen guys, 255 does apply to broadband.  Now, the Federal Communications 
Commission has announced that it plans to make a big decision on the future of 
broadband and probably will make that decision in probably May or June of this 
year. 

Now, I have informal indications from them, nothing formal, that it's quite 
possible that they will accept the recommendations we have made, but they 
include in their big decision on broadband that accessibility is required.  So 
I'm very hopeful that it will happen.  I want to urge everybody here to keep an 
eye open for the FCC broadband decision that we're all anticipating in May or 
June of this year.  If it doesn't happen, that means we'll have to go back to 
Congress.  Congress has to tell the FCC to do this thing. 

I hope that any of you who are interested in taking part of all this, the 
advocacy effort, because I do think it's a very important advocacy effort, 
should be in touch with people like Paul Schroeder.  He's vice-president of the 
American Foundation for the Blind and people like Charlie Crawford, American 
Council of the Blind.  People like Nancy Bloch, National Association of the 
Deaf.  People like Clyde Stout, Telecommunications for the Deaf, Inc., and of 
course Karen Strauss and Karen is finishing soon and going back into private 
practice as a lawyer in Washington, D.C.  Karen is unbelievable.  She's the 
absolute greatest advocate and lawyer in this field of telecommunications law.  
I want to encourage all of you to be in touch with us and say I want to know 
what I can do.  We can give you very good pointers on what to do and how to do 
it. 

Rachel:  Frank, I did just get a question that relates to what you're talking 
about. 

Interpreter:  I'm sorry, could you repeat that, Rachel? 

Rachel:  I did just get a question in that relates to what you're talking about.  
Can I go ahead and toss it out to you at this point? 

Frank:  Absolutely. 

Rachel:  The question is about what would make broadband accessible or not 
accessible? 

Frank:  What would make broadband accessible or not accessible would be a 
requirement that what I was talking about earlier to actually take place.  For 
example, you have broadband, will be transmitting information in 1's and 0's.  
Now, suppose that I said I like the videos and so I'm going to send it with a 
video and it's going to have narration and to hell with everybody else.  If I 
make that decision as a producer of the transmission, under current law, there 
is nothing to stop me.  There is nothing to say to me, hey, you have to make 
this stuff available in alternative media or in appropriate media.  As my blind 
friends always say appropriate media. 

What we would require would be a little clause in the FCC's decision that says, 
listen, guys, if you send information over one medium, you have to make it 
available in another medium because broadband can carry all of these mediums.  
So if there is someone who is sending information in text, it's got to have the 
capability of being -- it has to have the capability of being converted over to 
audio streaming for, let's say, somebody who is blind.  These kind of 
protections that we have in the current law, but only with respect to old 
fashioned, dial-up telephones.  Number one, if you make a new product or service 
in telecommunications, it must be accessible to people with disabilities; or if 
it's not, it has to be compatible with the products that people with 
disabilities use. 

Now, the compatibility thing could be speech recognition, it could be text to 
speech.  So for the people who E-mail me who are blind, they have text to speech 
attached to their computer and that is and accommodation that I have.  So 
anything that I do or the producer of broadband does, has to make sure that it 
has the information in text or, B., it can be taken by the speech synthesizer 
and converted.  That's basically all we need.  We just need to apply it to 
broadband as well as to narrowband. 


Rachel:  Okay, so then are we looking for a law or rule that would -- are we 
hoping that the FCC will regulate -- who are the parties that would be 
regulated?  It sounds like it would -- under the Telecommunications Act it's the 
manufacturers and so when it comes to broadband, would it be both technology 
people as well as whoever is producing something that will be broadcast by a 
broadband? 

Frank:  Yeah, the term that we use is providers.  So it would be providers of 
broadband.  What we're looking for now is a rule.  The rule will come out of the 
FCC.  Hopefully legislation will not be necessary. 


Rachel:  Okay.  Great.  I think that that answers that person's question. 
Back to you, Frank. 

Frank:  Okay.  I want to wrap up if I can.  Here is a summary of what we've been 
talking about. 

First of all, broadband is not scary at all.  It's basically a technology that 
is very high-speed telecommunications.  It's always on.  It's digital meaning 
it's in 1's and 0's, and it lends itself to protocol conversion, meaning if you 
are a person with a disability you can only accept information in one way.  It 
can make it available to you in that way. 

Now, because of the capabilities of broadband, very high-speed, always-on 
connectivity, you can have the capability of leapfrogging vast distances and 
connecting to very specialized providers for people who have very specialized 
needs regardless of where the people are as almost as if they were side by side 
in one room together.  And this will have enormous implications for improving 
the quality of training, of rehabilitation counseling, just think of peer 
counseling.  We could set somebody up who recently had a spinal cord injury 
together with someone else who had a spinal cord injury as if the two have them 
were side by side having a glass of beer and they can do the peer counseling 
regardless of where they are located.  One could be in Portland Maine and the 
other one in Portland, Oregon.  So this kind of capability then would enable 
rehabilitation and independent living centers which are cash starved to be able 
to greatly expand and improve the reach of their services as much, much less 
expense than is now involving travel and meals and per deem and all that stuff. 

Now, there are some issues with respect to the initial cost of the technology 
that is expensive at the moment, but because it's computer-based and because 
we've seen with everything else with technology that once something catches on, 
that I think either, A., independent living centers and rehab agencies should be 
in touch with big universities and big corporations and say can we use your room 
for an hour or whatever, for a Saturday when it's not otherwise being used until 
the costs come down, or they start writing grant applications now and by the 
time those granted applications are funded, the cost of the technology should 
have gone down. 

Now, I believe that this is important enough for people who care about the issue 
to become involved and I've identified the people that are leading this advocacy 
effort.  The American foundation for the blind, the American council of the 
blind, the National Association of the Deaf, Telecommunications for the Deaf, 
Inc., those are the main ones.  We're also working with people from the American 
association of people with disabilities.  All these people can help any advocate 
who calls to know what need to be done and how to do it. 

But briefly where we are right now here in April 2003, we are waiting for the 
FCC to make a very big decision on broadband.  And it's expected to happen this 
quarter, meaning May or June probably.  And we hope -- we don't know, but we 
hope that in making the decision, the FCC will say in effect that the 
accessibility rule that covers narrowband for telephones will also now apply to 
the providers of broadband services. 

Okay, that wraps it up, guys.  And unless we have any commercials to sponsor 
this webcast, I want to thank Rachel and Rob and everybody else and of course 
Glen. 

Rachel:  Okay.  We don't have any commercials, but I have a couple more 
questions for you. 

Frank:  Absolutely. 

Rachel:  Are you red any

Frank:  Yes. 

Rachel:  Okay, the first one is about how do these issues relate to the 
Americans with Disabilities Act?  Will the ADA extend to cover broadband 
providers? 


Frank:  No.  No, the ADA does not cover services at this time.  It does not 
cover technology.  It does not cover consumer products.  Forget about the 
concept of ADA applying to broadband.  What ADA does is it will (Inaudible) 
people will find that this technology helps them to comply and people with 
disabilities who go to colleges and schools and libraries and universities and 
companies, and if we need something special, we will find those accommodations 
that we need to be increasingly available through broadband.  In other words, 
it's a beneficial relationship.  It's not a regulatory one.  The ADA absolutely 
does not apply to broadband telecommunications. 

Rachel:  Okay.  All right.  I'm trying to think in which order to ask these next 
questions in.  One is how long do you think it will be before people with 
disabilities can afford this technology? 

Frank:  We have a number of people with disabilities right now who can already 
afford it.  It's about maybe 50 dollars a month.  The people who cannot afford 
that, I'd like you to take a look at the history of this thing.  The costs are 
going to come down and they're going to come down rapidly.  We're at the point 
now, for example, where you can make long distance phone calls on your cell 
phone for virtually nothing and it used to be that that used to cost 10 or 15 or 
20 dollars.  The first long distance bill I had was more than 200 dollars.  You 
can now do that basically for nothing.  The same thing will happen with this.  
Over a period of time the costs will fall. 

Now, if you say I can't afford it now and I don't want to wait, then you 
probably -- your best bet is to go to your local library, go to your local 
college or university and use it there. 

Of course you'll have to wait, but the service should be available there for 
you. 


Rachel:  Okay.  All right, I have two questions that have to do with some of the 
advocacy that you were talking about.  One is there is a request for if you can 
provide the names and contact information for the people and organizations 
you've mentioned.  And if -- I'm adding this in -- if you're willing to do that, 
you could E-mail it to me and I can put it up on the website when this webcast 
is archived. 

Frank:  I'll be glad to do that.  No problem. 

Rachel:  Good.  We'll follow up and do that. 

Okay, another more specific question is what should -- this is coming from 
somebody with a disability.  What should we do today to impact an FCC rule? 

Frank:  At this point we are expecting the Federal Communications Commission to 
make a decision in the next maybe two or three months.  It's a little difficult 
at this very late point to actually influence them because any time that you try 
to influence them at this time because the comment period is now closed, you 
have to do an ex part tay proceeding which means you have to send them an E-mail 
and which you detail who you are and you have to do two communications, one to 
the FCC and a second one saying, oh, by the way, I have an ex parte and so it's 
kind of bothersome.  At this point what I would recommend people do is be tuned 
in to the fact -- and this issue should be announced any time in the next maybe 
two or three months -- in the event that it is -- and we hope the FCC will do 
what we hope they will do, I would want to thank the FCC for being so wise and 
fore sighted and everything.  If the FCC is a bad bunch of boys and girls and 
does the wrong thing, then obviously we have to go to capital hill.  We have to 
say to Congress, you have to tell the FCC that they really blew it here.  In 
that case you would be contacting the members of Congress and senators and say, 
broadband is the future of this country.  And we want to be part of the future 
of this country.  And we can't be unless we have access to broadband, so you 
have to ask your members of Congress or senators to be in touch with the FCC.  
This is after a bad decision, if it happens. 

Rachel:  Okay.  I think that's helpful in sort of orienting people to what they 
can do to impact broadband and the accessibility of broadband. 

Let's see, I have one more question which I'll paraphrase.  This comes from 
somebody who began to read your paper but didn't get to read it carefully before 
the presentation, but noticed that you mentioned deinstitutionalization and 
wants to know how broadband affects deinstitutionalization. 

Frank:  Yeah, this is Olmstead.  Olmstead, of course, among people who follows 
this, Olmstead is a very famous decision where people who had been living in 
massive impersonal communities who could live in the community, and they made it 
happen and we're having a lot of difficulty making it happen.  We have the 
states being very reluctant to take money that Medicaid is now giving these big 
institutions and put that same money into the community. 

We have a group called MiCasa, for at least five or six years now are trying to 
get it through Congress. 

Now, what broadband means for deinstitutionalization, what it means for MI CASA, 
I want to tell you back to that telepresence concept, where it's like somebody 
is physically with you, and I want to ask you to imagine that you are an 
independent living counselor at the Houston center for independent living, 
downtown Houston, and you have a number of people who have been 
deinstitutionalized from the Texas legislature.  Now, those people who used to 
be in the Texas legislature are now coming back into the community and they need 
to be monitored.  They need to be helped.  They need to have somebody with them 
and noticing what they're doing and helping them get through the day. 

You can do that if you are a counselor at the Houston Center For Independent 
Living.  Can you do that for 15 or 20 consumers without ever leaving your office 
because you can connect with each one in a realtime basis, snap, snap, snap, 
snap, you can see what they're doing.  They can ask you questions, you request 
answer them.  You can demonstrate what you want them to do, in how to pay the 
rent, make the bed, whatever you are trying to get them to do. 
In other words, one counselor can support one dozen or two dozen consumers who 
have been deinstitutionalized.  In order to do the same thing without broadband 
or telepresence, you would have to employ probably a dozen counselors who would 
probably spend half the workweek driving from house to house, and even then you 
would not be able to provide help to people for more than a few hours a week. 

What this is is a much better, much more around the clock support and an 
(Inaudible).  A good example of the potential applications of telepresence and 
broadband. 

Rachel:  Okay.  That was helpful.  All right, I have two other questions I'm 
going to try to squeeze in here just to shift gears. 

The first one is are the broadband companies supportive of the addition of 
broadband to section 255 of the Telecommunications Act of 96? 

Frank:  Those of us who are advocates who have talked with some people who are 
telecommunications companies, we have not talked with all of them.  Those that 
we have talked with have said to us basically we will not oppose this, meaning 
they are saying we will not come out and ask the FCC not to do it and we will 
not go to Congress and ask them not to do it. 
Now, I have been monitoring this carefully and I have yet to see any responsible 
telecommunications company or broadband provider out there actually come out and 
oppose this.  So a letter this point I can safely say they are not publicly 
opposing us. 

To go a step further and say are those companies supporting this is probably 
being a little bit to Polly Annie-ish. 

I think they are taking the attitude if the FCC requires it we'll go along with 
it. 

Rachel:  Okay.  Last one I'm going to sneak in here.  This comes from somebody 
in Michigan and they say the problem they have in Michigan is linking rural or 
remote independent living centers into a low cost video conferencing system 
because it's often too expensive for them to travel to training.  Unfortunately, 
broadband is usually not available in most of these areas. 

So they want to know are you aware of any efforts to provide availability to 
broadband in the rural areas? 

Frank:  Yes, I do know of several efforts, and they are promising. 

One of them has to do with a provision in the law that we call the schools and 
libraries act, otherwise known as the rock ee fell era mend.  And that language 
provides for subsidies for rural deployment of high-speed communications.  The 
person from Michigan in the northern areas of Michigan -- I have been there and 
I do remember being in Michigan and driving south to get into Canada and driving 
north to get back into Michigan.  So I do know what they're talking about. 

I do think they should be looking into what we call the schools and libraries 
commission for possible subsidies to pay for this. 

No. 2, there is another solution called wireless broadband or wireless broadband 
will be broadband that we've been talking about that is being delivered by means 
of cell phones wirelessly. 

It's a little bit further down the road and it's much slower than the wireline 
broadband.  It's much slower, but it is another alternative and it will be 
available, especially in rural areas to try to provide something that's 
affordable. 

Rachel:  Okay.  Great.  We will, it's just about three o'clock.  So before I 
make closing comments, Dr. Bowe, do you have anything else that you'd like to 
say? 

Frank:  Yes, Rachel, I hope you guys will say Hi to Lex.  I haven't seen Lex in 
awhile.  I hope you will tell him he's doing a good job.  I hope you will tell 
all the guys in ILRU that I use you guys all the time.  I got to the web all the 
time to figure stuff out.  You have the only reliable direct tri of independent 
living centers in the country.  You guys are all indispensable. 

Rachel:  Thank you so much.  And guys, I didn't pay him for that.  He did it all 
on his own. 

I really want to thank you.  Again, our presenter is Dr. Frank Bowe, and thank 
you so much and thank you for handling our technical difficulties with grace, 
but most of all, for really providing this information that people are hungry 
for. 

As we close, I just wanted to mention --

Frank:  Thank you, Rachel. 

Rachel:  You're welcome. 
I just want to make a few other thank yous.  Today's program was supported by 
the -- sponsored by the Disability Law Resource Project and we'd like to thank 
our funder, who is NIDRR.  And also we want to thank the ILRU webcast team who 
has made this possible, and they include Marj Gordon, Dawn Heinsohn, and Sharon 
Finney.  And of course we'd like to thank our technical master who pulled us 
through the difficulties today, and is always very helpful to us and that is Rob 
Dickehuth, and last but definitely not least is our realtime captioner, Marie 
Bryant, who is able to keep up with anybody around. 

So again we're glad you joined us today.  We hope you will visit our website 
again.  Today's presentation will be archived and a transcript will be made 
available as well.  An unedited transcript will go up tomorrow and then an 
edited one will follow shortly after, and we have plenty of additional web casts 
that are being scheduled as we speak.  And so we hope you'll check back and join 
us again in the future for other web casts. 

Thanks again everybody.  Have a great afternoon.