Hi, I'm Beth Haller
I'm a professor of Mass Communication at Towsen University in Maryland
I also teach Disability Studies there and at several other campuses
I teach at City University of New York and their Disability Studies programme
I teach at York University in Toronto and their Disability Studies programme
I teach at University of Texas, Arlington and their Disability Studies minor
So I've been doing research since the early 90's
About media representations of people with disabilities
So I have a kind of unique relationship to the ADA
Because I did my dissertation on how the news media covered it
So before I went to Temple University in Philadelphia to get my PhD
I was at University of Maryland College Park getting my Masters
I started that in 1989
And there's a reason for all these numbers (laughs) these dates
And in 1988 is when the Deaf President Now movement happened
That gathered at university in DC, and I think somewhere in the back of my mind
I knew about what was happening because I was a journalist before I became academic
So when I started at College Park in 1989 I ended up doing an article for a class
About a deaf student at Gallaudet and I got very interested in the deaf community
There's a huge deaf community in the DC area
Doing my Masters thesis on how the deaf community was represented
Before, during and after Deaf President Now
In the New York Times and the Washington Post
That was a jumping-off point
When I left College Park it was 1991 and so the ADA had just been passed
And when I got to Temple to start working on my PhD
I knew that I wanted to still work in the area of disability
And we just had this major disability rights law passed
I remember it more as a focus of my research
Cause I don't necessarily remember seeing the actual coverage on the day it happened
In 1990, but I do remember looking at all the coverage cause that was the subject
Of my dissertation
So it was really interesting to look at it as an academic
And to kind of watch it happen and then not happen (laughs)
As it moved into the future
So my dissertation looked at how the mainstream news media
You know, all the big news magazines and the major newspapers back then
So I finished my dissertation in '94 Graduated in '95
So it was very early days of the ADA so it wasn't really being implemented yet
Because they gave several years for people to get into compliance
But as the years have passed it's been very interesting to watch how things
Weren't happening
And I think what we all thought was going to happen was:
Congress was going to pass this major disability rights law
And people would then follow it because it's now federal law
Not to discriminate based on disability
But that isn't what happened (laughs)
And from a media standpoint, that really kind of hurt ADA because-
And I've even had this conversation with disability rights scholars and
Disability rights activists- because they I think thought
In that same way that it's now law and everything will be fine
And there was such a history of being covered in the media so badly
That the activists thought they could get this past and everything would be fine
And they didn't need the media for anything
So I come onto the scene, I start going to Society for Disability studies,
Meetings in the early 90's, started presenting my research
And even the disability community in those first early years right after the ADA
Didn't understand why the media was important
Because I remember presenting at a conference
At a Disability Studies conference And people coming up to me and saying
"That's really nice that you do work on media, but we have bigger things we
Need to be dealing with: getting people jobs, getting people proper education
Getting people out of nursing homes." My response to everybody was
"How do you think you're going to do that if you're not getting out information
Into public opinion, so if you're not able to change public opinion
How can you get these things accomplished?
And how do you get public opinion changed? You get a proper narrative
Going in the media." And now there's actual disability studies, research
And disability activists who've talked about this in the early 2000's
About how they took the wrong tactic after the ADA was passed