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Hi, I'm Beth Haller

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I'm a professor of Mass Communication
at Towsen University in Maryland

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I also teach Disability Studies there
and at several other campuses

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I teach at City University of New York
and their Disability Studies programme

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I teach at York University in Toronto
and their Disability Studies programme

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I teach at University of Texas, Arlington
and their Disability Studies minor

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So I've been doing research since
the early 90's

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About media representations of people
with disabilities

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So I have a kind of unique
relationship to the ADA

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Because I did my dissertation on
how the news media covered it

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So before I went to Temple University
in Philadelphia to get my PhD

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I was at University of Maryland College
Park getting my Masters

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I started that in 1989

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And there's a reason for all these numbers
(laughs) these dates

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And in 1988 is when the Deaf President
Now movement happened

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That gathered at university in DC, and I
think somewhere in the back of my mind

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I knew about what was happening because I
was a journalist before I became academic

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So when I started at College Park in 1989
I ended up doing an article for a class

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About a deaf student at Gallaudet and I
got very interested in the deaf community

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There's a huge deaf community
in the DC area

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Doing my Masters thesis on how the
deaf community was represented

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Before, during and after 
Deaf President Now

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In the New York Times and the
Washington Post

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That was a jumping-off point

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When I left College Park it was 1991
and so the ADA had just been passed

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And when I got to Temple to start 
working on my PhD

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I knew that I wanted to still work in
the area of disability

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And we just had this major disability
rights law passed

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I remember it more as a focus
of my research

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Cause I don't necessarily remember seeing
the actual coverage on the day it happened

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In 1990, but I do remember looking at all
the coverage cause that was the subject

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Of my dissertation

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So it was really interesting to look
at it as an academic

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And to kind of watch it happen and
then not happen (laughs)

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As it moved into the future

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So my dissertation looked at how the
mainstream news media

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You know, all the big news magazines
and the major newspapers back then

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So I finished my dissertation in '94
Graduated in '95

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So it was very early days of the ADA so it
wasn't really being implemented yet

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Because they gave several years for
people to get into compliance

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But as the years have passed it's been
very interesting to watch how things

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Weren't happening

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And I think what we all thought was
going to happen was:

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Congress was going to pass this major
disability rights law

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And people would then follow it
because it's now federal law

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Not to discriminate based on disability

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But that isn't what happened (laughs)

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And from a media standpoint, that really
kind of hurt ADA because-

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And I've even had this conversation with
disability rights scholars and

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Disability rights activists-
because they I think thought

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In that same way that it's now law
and everything will be fine

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And there was such a history of being
covered in the media so badly

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That the activists thought they could get
this past and everything would be fine

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And they didn't need the
media for anything

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So I come onto the scene, I start going
to Society for Disability studies,

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Meetings in the early 90's,
started presenting my research

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And even the disability community in those
first early years right after the ADA

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Didn't understand why the
media was important

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Because I remember presenting
at a conference

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At a Disability Studies conference
And people coming up to me and saying

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"That's really nice that you do work on
media, but we have bigger things we

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Need to be dealing with: getting people
jobs, getting people proper education

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Getting people out of nursing homes."
My response to everybody was

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"How do you think you're going to do that
if you're not getting out information

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Into public opinion, so if you're not
able to change public opinion

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How can you get these
things accomplished?

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And how do you get public opinion
changed? You get a proper narrative

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Going in the media." And now there's
actual disability studies, research

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And disability activists who've talked
about this in the early 2000's

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About how they took the wrong tactic
after the ADA was passed